


Plummeting and Plumage

by herebewyverns



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Aziraphale is Bad at Feelings (Good Omens), Aziraphale is Not Oblivious (Good Omens), Aziraphale is so Good at Thwarting he even Thwarts Himself, Crack Treated Seriously, Crowley is Bad at Feelings (Good Omens), Crowley is a Wily Serpent, F/M, Ineffable Idiots (Good Omens), M/M, Mating Bond, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Mating Rituals, Nesting, She/Her Pronouns for Crowley (Good Omens), When Appropriate, not entirely
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-24
Updated: 2019-10-24
Packaged: 2020-09-25 07:43:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 25,980
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20373169
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/herebewyverns/pseuds/herebewyverns
Summary: In which the Almighty punishes the angels for their sense of superiority over the fallen Adam and Eve … with a mating cycle. It doesn’t take Crowley and Aziraphale very long to jump into a completely different Arrangement.Somehow it still takes exactly as long to work out that they love each other though…---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------"What're they playing at?" said Aziraphale."I don't know," said Crowley, "but I think it's called silly buggers." His tone suggested that he could play, too. And do it better.





	1. Eden – 4004 BC

**Author's Note:**

> I've been laid up sick for a while and a friend, trying to cheer me up, suggested the most ridiculous fic idea she could think of. We laughed and all was well... 
> 
> Joke's on her in the end, though, because _then I went and wrote it! _
> 
> I don't even know what I was thinking either, and mostly what I have discovered is that I am genuinely incapable of writing non-heartbreaking stories. The things you learn about yourself at 30...
> 
> I'm deeply sorry to all of you who thought I had dignity. We were all wrong.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Crawly and Aziraphale first meet, and Aziraphale worries Very Much...

It all begins in a Garden. Well, not in the Garden, exactly. On the Wall around the Garden.

It begins, as it will end, with a conversation.

A conversation that probably shouldn’t be going on, between an angel and a demon. The angel is sheltering the demon from the rain, tucking him in close. The demon is sheltering the angel from the doubts that niggle away at his heart…

Perhaps everything, in the whole history of History, would be different if there were more conversations? It might make things simpler.

On the other hand, it would all be a lot less funny, from an Ineffable stand-point…

*

Adam holds his hand out to steady Eve as she stumbles, still not used to the extra weight around her middle and not at all helped by the mud from the first rain shower. They vanish around a sand dune, and for a while at least they are outside of an angel’s watchful eye.

Crawly finally stirs from his position huddled against the strange little angel he’s just met. The rain’s stopped at last, and if he stays there much longer without a good excuse, he’s probably pushing his luck. Not that Crawly in general isn’t _all about_ pushing his luck. But if he wants to keep being able to approach the strange angel at will, he should probably move a bit slower. Probably.

Then he chances another glance at the angel – Aziraphale, he’s heard, but it’s such a mouthful for a tongue only recently un-forked – and he finds the perfect excuse to stay talking a bit longer.

“You’re not still worried about them, are you? Look, you watched him kill the bloody lion, they’ve eaten well, they’ve got light and warmth, they’ll be fine for a while. Honestly, angel, what’s eating you _now_?”

Aziraphale pauses at last in his endless wringing of hands and bites his lip. Crawly is struck by the sudden urge to bite that lip too, a hard yank of ache right in his gut. He blinks and pushes the stray though aside. Where had it even come from, anyway?

Crawly forcibly makes himself pay attention to the conversation happening right next to him. The angel is talking.

“It’s not – it’s not _them_. Well, I suppose it is a little bit. But,” the angel waves his hands around as if Crawly will magically understand the strange shapes his fretful fingers are sketching. Crawly does not. “It’s the other angels, you see. I’m worried about them.”

Crawly isn’t immediately sure what to say to that.

On the one hand, the other angels strike him as wankers, and Crawly would never want to hang around with them now that he doesn’t have to. Therefore joining Aziraphale in worrying about them is right off his 'To Do' list. On the other hand, if Aziraphale is worried about what they’ll do to him for giving his flaming sword away, that’s _different_. Crawly resists the equally sudden urge to transform back into a snake and wrap himself tight around Aziraphale head to foot. Keep the only interesting feathered bastard still standing completely safe at all costs.

Finally he settles on as innocuous a response as he can manage. “Worried?”

Aziraphale had not, apparently, needed much prodding. It all comes tumbling out like the rainwater they’ve just stood through.

“Yes, they’re getting _frightfully_ haughty about the whole business with, you know,” he waves a hand in the direction the humans left in. Crawly notices that he, the Serpent, is not being included in the hand wave. He’s not sure what that means.

“All I’ve heard all day has been gloating - really Crawly, there’s no other word for it! _Gloating!_ – about how they always knew the humans were inferior and about how it had taken barely anything at all to make them Fall from Grace, and-“

“Hey! I resent that! It took me bloody ages to talk Eve round to my point of view.”

Crawly is not sulking. _He isn’t._

Aziraphale smiles at him so gently, the demon thinks he might actually melt to join the puddles. He firmly tells his corporation that it has to do better at structural integrity than this. No melting.

“I’m sure you did, my dear. You’re such a wily thing, and Eve has such a strong will of her own, it must have taken ever such a lot. Two great titans and all that, battling it out…”

He trails off and Crawly (in between definitely no preening at all) tries to get this conversation back on topic.

“So they’re all being smug bastards about the misfortunes of others? Sounds about right. Business as usual Up There, isn’t it? What’s to worry about?”

Aziraphale casts him a slightly reproachful look, but Crawly again doesn’t miss the way the angel doesn’t actually argue with the demon’s assessment of Heaven’s general demeanour.

The Angel huffs slightly, but answers him.

“I’m worried that there might be…” he glances around them, furtively, “… another Fall. Or worse another War. I really couldn’t take another of either, Crawly, it was all so horribly unpleasant.”

Crawly shrugs. Unpleasant is certainly one word for it.

Aziraphale’s wings flutter a bit, showing his distress, and then to Crawly’s shock they mantle around him again, protective.

“I do hope… Crawly, are you all… are you all _happy_ now? Down There, I mean? Is it alright? I’ve been dreadfully worried about you all…”

Crawly’s heart hurts. He looks down in case there’s blood, nothing hurts this much without blood, surely?

“It’s not… It’s not really _about_ Happiness. It’s about… Look, it’s not Heaven, but I wouldn’t call it fun, angel, no.”

_“Oh, Crawly…”_

Aziraphale sounds so pained at the thought, Crawly can’t stand it. He reaches for something, _anything_, to say, to change the topic.

“So you’re worried about another Fall, then?”

Aziraphale takes a steading breath and manages to stop looking like he wants to cozy every single Fallen angel in existence into a little nest and keep them safe. Mostly.

“Well, it’s not really very _angelic_, is it? Gloating about other people’s weaknesses. It’s cruel and angels shouldn’t be cruel, and we’ve all got our weak spots, don’t we? I don’t see how else things could go, and I … I wish they wouldn’t.”

Aziraphale is staring disconsolately at his feet now, and Crawly nudges his wings to wrap around him in return.

“Hey now, don’t be like that. Maybe the Fall was a one-time thing and they’ll all just get a stiff letter of Disapproval or something?”

Aziraphale brightens right back up again, and Crawly thinks that if he gets to do that for forever, he’ll gladly accept the role.

“Oh! Oh, I hadn’t even considered… Oh, that would be much better, wouldn’t it? Oh thank you, Crawly, you’ve been such a comfort to me today!”

Crawly refuses, absolutely _refuses_, to blush, and he nudges his shoulder against the angel sharply, and snaps his fangs a little to emphasise his point.

“None of that now, angel, I’m not a comfort, I’m a demon! We don’t go around offering people comfort, that’s your job! You’re the angel here.” He sniffs, and makes a shooing motion. “Go on! Go off and … and spread some comfort around. Shoo!”

The angel giggles – _giggles! _Who does that? Honestly… - but does at last stop trying to tuck his wings around Crawly’s shoulders like he thinks the demon won’t notice. He takes a step away, shivers like he’s gone suddenly chilled, and smiles a little more fondly than he probably ought to at Crawly.

“Yes, you’re quite right, my dear. I really should get going. There’s a dreadful hole in the Wall, after all, no idea how that got there, should probably go and brick it up again, dreadful if someone were to trip over all the mess.” He does a funny little half wave, and turns, still speaking to Crawly over his shoulder. “Lovely to talk to you, we must do this again sometime. Tootle pip!”

“Tootle pip?” Crawly says to himself, bewildered and generally wondering what just happened to him. “Well, that was a Thing…”

He turns and heads off as well. Lots to do, as the angel said, and he should probably go and make his glowing report. He thinks he’ll leave out the bit about the angel though.

It’s not like it made sense even to Crawly, and he was _there_.

*

There isn’t another rebellion, as it happens, but Aziraphale might actually have preferred it if there had been. Because they were both right, as it turned out, and the Almighty did not consider gloating about the weaknesses inherent in others to be appropriately angelic behaviour. But Falling was last year’s news, and the Almighty had obviously gotten a taste for this Creative Thinking lark.

That or a sense of humour…


	2. The Ark – 3004 BC

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Crawly and Aziraphale reuinte before a certain ship, and Aziraphale has some ... unusual ... news to share. Crawly was not prepared for any of this.

They meet up again.

Of course they do, as if Crawly was going to let this one get away from him!

He’s less than thrilled to discover that they’re meeting up to watch another display of the Almighty’s… what was the word Aziraphale used? _Tetchiness_. There had to be a better system to voice Her displeasure than this- this all-or-nothing malarkey. 

Ah well, demons can’t be choosers, he supposed, and he’s found the angel he wanted anyway.

“I see there wasn’t another Rebellion after all, Angel.”

“Hmm?” Aziraphale’s still watching the children chasing the escaped unicorn around, looking slightly bewildered and a bit deflated. Crawly would do a lot to stop him looking like that ever again.

“Another Rebellion? You were worried about that, last time we saw each other.”

“Oh.” Aziraphale brightened with remembering their first meeting, and then very distinctly _blushed_.

Crawly stared at the angel’s pinkened cheeks and wondered what on Earth that was in aid of… It couldn’t be, surely? _Surely?_

Aziraphale visibly pulls himself together a little, and nods, though he’s still studiously avoiding looking at the demon, Crawly notes.

“No, no Rebellion at all! Wonderful isn’t it? Such a relief.” Aziraphale risks a quick glance at Crawly’s face, then hurried returns his attention to the Ark-filling going on. “You were quite right, my dear. No Falling anymore.”

Crawly wants to gloat a little – which is still a demonic thing, those Heavenly hard-asses can get their celestial mitts off it! – about the angel saying out-loud that he’s right, but he suspects that there’s a diversion going on here, and he’s got other questions.

“Excellent. Glad to hear it. I was keeping an ear out, you know, just in case we got a big surge of new-comers and all. Didn’t hear anything, so I assumed everything was fine." The angel next to him definitely just _twitched_. Oh, Crawly would never have believed it, but he’s got to ask now… “Heard something else weird though…”

He trails off leadingly, and the angel falls straight for it.

“Oh? Heard what?”

Crawly’s smile is filled with demonic glee – even if this was all nonsense and Hastur was just screwing with him, it will be worth it to make the angel blush as hard as Crawly expects him to.

“The word is that Heaven’s got this mass orgies going on Up There. Imagine! Every hundred years or so, _sex_ going on everywhere!”

And the angel _is_ blushing, no doubt about that, but what he goes and says next throws Crawly completely off his game.

“Well really! It’s nothing like so disorganised as that, what a dreadful mess it would all be! Everything’s much more well-coordinated and civilised, I'll have you know!”

And Crawly’s brain just _melts_. There’s no other way to describe it. Complete blank, no incoming signals being received. Total silence and a bit of background fuzziness.

“What?” Is all he can manage in response.

Aziraphale huffs, embarrassed and a little indignant and Crawly’s brain is filing absolutely everything about a discomposed angel and this conversation away for later … perusal. Yes.

“No, really. _What?!_” Crawly just can’t get his head around it all. “I mean, _really?! _When did this happen?! Angels didn’t get up to anything _like_ that when I was one.”

At least, Crawly didn’t think they did. If they had, maybe he’d have had something to do that wasn’t asking questions. Would have saved him a lot of trouble. And sauntering.

Bless it.

On the other hand, he thinks as he looks on the towering shape of the Ark ahead of them in a rare moment of giving the Almighty the benefit of his own personal doubt, maybe if Crawly had asked fewer questions then there would be a different demon having this conversation with Aziraphale. And _that_ just wouldn’t be right!

Aziraphale is back to his hand-wringing, and Crawly desperately wants to gather the angel’s hands up in his own to stop them. He tucks his arms behind himself to stave off temptation.

(It’s not his strongest point; resisting temptation. He manages.)

Having apparently resigned himself to the reality that they are actually having this conversation, Aziraphale fixes his gaze determinedly on some distant cloud, pushes his shoulders back and lifts his chin and starts talking. Crawly would normally be distracted by this glimpse of a warrior with a flaming sword that’s peeking out around a worried angel with flaming cheeks, but he’s far too interested in what Aziraphale is actually _saying_.

Apparently, the Almighty has gone and cursed Her angels with a mating cycle. Something about learning to have a greater appreciation for the experience of being vulnerable to others, and clearly needing to forge closer bonds with others. Crawly’s not really following the logic, and he likely isn’t being helped in this effort by the fact that Aziraphale doesn’t either. The angel’s also clearly not much of a fan.

“I mean, don’t get me wrong,” he says as the first raindrops start to fall and they start walking towards the shelter of a tree for a while. “I’m all for us angels learning new things and the opportunity to appreciate the experiences of others. It just seems like a very odd way to go about teaching us all a lesson, don’t you think?”

“I think you didn’t need to learn the lesson in the first place, angel. You were fretting so hard about the humans being out in the Big Bad World, She could probably have heard it all the way Up in wherever She is.”

Aziraphale looks shocked by his words, and touched by his … praise? Crawly didn’t mean it to be a compliment, but the angel seems to take it as such.

“Oh, I’d never have wanted to be singled out, at all. And besides, I’m sure plenty of the others were worried too, they just didn’t have anyone to talk to about it.”

Crawly isn’t so certain, but it seems pointless to start that argument when there’s a much more juicy topic right in front of him to sink his teeth into. Metaphorically speaking.

“So every hundred years, you…?” He trails off in a leading manner, and Aziraphale shrugs.

“I mean, by and large, yes? Nothing so regular, of course, and not all angels at the same time, thank goodness. Could you imagine? Dreadful thought, Heaven would grind to a complete halt. Nothing would get _done_.”

Crawly has to actually bite his own _tongue_ to keep hold in the joke he so desperately wants to make. _Honestly, angel, the things you say_…

“But yes, that’s about it, really. Forever, I suppose.”

Crawly leans against the tree trunk and sniffs, impressed but also deeply _not_. “Seems a bit excessive, don’t you think? Cursing the whole lot of you for a few wankers being rude.” He casts a slightly contemptuous look Upwards. “And there I thought She’d grown a little and become a bit less prone to over-reacting over first offenses.” Although in fairness, Crawly remembers a lot of the angels in Heaven and he doubts very much that this was a first offense or even a first-hundredth one.

Then he looks at the Ark again, and thinks about the kids and the animals who weren’t so graciously chosen to be saved, and he sniffs. “But clearly not. Shame there’s not an appeals process for these sorts of things. Might be a bit over-loaded initially, but seems like it could come in handy.”

Aziraphale follows his gaze back to the boat and coughs in a embarrassed yet significant way. Crawly braces himself for whatever must be coming next.

“Ah. About that.”

He knew it. There’s always something else, isn’t there?

“About what?”

“Appeals. Ah.” Aziraphale pushes a pebble around with his toe and looks somehow even more deeply uncomfortable than he had when explaining to Crawly about having been saddled with a biological cycle he didn’t need.

Aziraphale takes a deep breath, braces himself and points to the Ark, and starts to speak again, explaining that it was, in point of fact, his colleagues’ efforts at protesting this whole nonsense had kicked off this particular bout of … tetchiness. It seems that a couple of them thought that it was humanity’s fault that they’d ended up like this, so they slaked their lusts upon humans.

“_Angel!_”

Crawly’s shocked and somehow more appalled than he expected. He needn’t have worried though; Azirapahel looks somehow more appalled than Crawly suspects that he does.

“Oh goodness, not _me!_ Could you imagine? It would have been most awkward and of course the poor dears wouldn’t have been able to really Know us, would they? Got to be equal footing for these things, I think, most important.”

Anyway, this has all ended up with the inadvertent creation of monsters too horrifying even for angels to handle, great twenty-foot eldritch horrors, all clawed wings and fire-spitting eyes; dreadful business. And to make matters even worse, it seems that these Nephilim can’t be killed by man or angel. The flood will wipe them out though. Apparently.

Their fathers have been turned into mountains or something, Aziraphale has heard. He seems to consider this to be only right and just, but also gives the distinct impression of Righteous anger urging him to deal with his former colleagues _personally_. Leaving frightened mothers to deal with monstrous offspring is apparently a hard-no for the angel.

“Phew!” Crawly’s lost for words. Almost. “Haven’t your lot heard of birth-control?”

Aziraphale looks to be on the verge of actually speaking ill of his colleagues outright. This is just too good, Crawly leans in a little so he can’t miss anything.

“_I_ _think_ that if those responsible had a single shred of common-sense and forward-thinking, we wouldn’t be in this mess to begin with.”

Crawly laughs and laughs and laughs. Aziraphale looks briefly surprised at his response, but apparently making a demon laugh is good enough for him to stop fluffing his feathers up in agitation. It’s the little things…

Then a thought strikes Crawly; one which immediately dowses the simmering warmth of inexplicable hope building in his chest with cold water. He hadn’t even realised that the possibility had occurred to him, but…

Crawly is _extremely_ casual, watching the lightning strikes in the distance when he asks,

“So… No non-angelic partners for this … mating thing then? I suppose?”

Aziraphale tilts his head; apparently _he_ hadn’t been thinking about it.

“I… We’re calling them our ‘seasons’, my dear. Much less… sordid sounding, don’t you think?”

“I think you’re avoiding the question, angel, is what I think.”

“Well, I don’t really know, you see. It’s never come up. Besides, I rather think that the issue with the –“ his ever-twitching hands sketch out something formless and huge, which Crawly takes to mean ‘Nephilim’ in his strange version of sign language. “- well, _that_ came from the attitudes of those who so utterly took leave of their own duty of care. I mean, if the whole point was to take revenge upon the Almighty by doing such dreadful violence against Her creations, how could _anything_ good come out of it? If all you want to do is destroy something precious, you’ll never create anything worthwhile, will you?”

Crawly is horribly aware that he’s looking a little awe-struck as he gazes upon Aziraphale’s animated, earnest face. The demon might have a low opinion of Heaven and all its works at times, but this angel, this tiny force of Good in the world… Well, if Aziraphale were leading an army, Crawly would be right there at the head of the line to join up.

Aziraphale’s still speaking.

“-the whole, I think the ones who are really onto something are the angels who were friends before they … paired up, if you will. Whenever their – ah – _seasons _are passed they’re much more well-rested and have far fewer aches and pains than the rest of us. Perhaps that was what the Almighty intended? For angels to be encouraged to grow closer together? What do you think?”

Crawly is quite genuinely unable to process everything he thinks, never mind try to articulate any of this. It’s all a mess, in his head and in his chest and he…

Ok, he bows out.

“I think I’m getting cold, standing around in all this rain and getting wet. And I think I’m overdue in thwarting a bit of the Ineffable Plan by getting some of the kids to safety. Honestly, angel, all this murdering children thing your side have got going on, it’s like my side’s got competition as the bad guys…”

Aziraphale is efficiently distracted by this new topic, agreeing to help with so much haste it was like he was only waiting to be _asked_ by someone, _anyone_, to do something. They bicker about whether saving children’s lives is a Good thing or a Bad one, but by the end of the week there’s a whole new island nation being set up.

(Aziraphale may have over-done it massively with the miracles, what with pulling a whole island up from the sea-bed to keep everyone safely housed on. Crawly found him passed out and bleeding from the eyes, and vowed to himself that encouraging the angel to outright thwart Ineffable Plans would be moved permanently onto the ‘Only If Absolutely Necessary, and Not Even Then’ list)

It’s busy work; a lot to do and even more sneaking around so that neither side notices them doing any of it for as long as they can manage. Crawly puts the … other matter aside for a while. He’ll come back to it when he’s got more time. More privacy.


	3. Golgotha – 33AD

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which terrible things are contemplated, Crowley questions all of her life-choices, and a terrible day for everyone brings a spark of hope to a few...

Crawly – no Crowley now - regards Aziraphale carefully, and not just because neither of them can stand to watch the young men suffering on their crosses for another moment. The angel looks miserable and twitchy - which is only to be expected given the circumstances - but there’s something else, Crowley thinks, something more…?

“Are you going to tell me what else is bothering you, or am I going to have to start asking questions?”

“Hmm?” It’s a pathetic stalling attempt, and they both know it. Crowley just raises one perfect eyebrow and waits. She can be patient.

Aziraphale shuffles and wrings his hands and _twitches _some more. Crowley would really like to have the right one day to do something to make the angel stop doing that…

“This really isn’t the time or the place to be discussing this, Craw- Crowley.” Aziraphale hisses.

Crowley looks back up at the young man she’d quite enjoyed speaking to as he dies by agonising inches. She’s angry – at the injustice that brought this about, at the fate of a clever young man who’d wanted to make the world just a little bit better, at the pitiless nature of Heaven - and she needs a distraction or she’s going to let all of that anger lose on the one person who’d listen and understand it. And Aziraphale doesn’t deserve that.

So, no, this might not be the time or the place, but it’s what they’ve got, and in a strange relationship such as theirs, that’s rather their motto.

“Well, we can talk about whatever’s getting your knickers in such a twist, or we can ruminate further on your side’s frankly appalling policies and why you’re even following them when they make you so unhappy. _Or_ we can talk about how you got reprimanded for the third time this century for ‘over-doing it’ on the miracles, by which I mean you got yelled at for _helping people_ like that’s not your whole job, and again we can circle back around to talking about why you’re still working for these people?”

Crowley pauses, taking a breath she doesn’t need and looking over at the angel who’s looking far more miserable than he had when she’d started talking, but it’s angels who are meant to be the merciful ones, not demons.

“Or we can talk about whatever it is that’s making you so twitchy you’re going to jump right out of your wings any minute if you’re not careful.”

Aziraphale looks down at his feet for a second and then sighs, shoulders slumping in defeat.

“Fine. I – It’s my season, you see? It’s coming up soon-“ Crowley jumps and looks so alarmed at the prospect that the angel almost grins for a second “- Oh, don’t look so _alarmed_, my dear. Not _now_. Just … should be about another ten years or so, give or take, never been very regular, me.”

Crowley breathes a bit more, until the world stops spinning a little and she can see past the fog in front of her eyes.

“OK, I can see how that might make you ... antsy?

It’s not everything that’s bothering Aziraphale though, and they are both very aware that Crowley knows it. She waits, patiently. The angel is very good at responding to her patient silences, after all these years.

Finally Aziraphale sighs, looks _distinctly _grumpy and wrings his hands a bit before conceding defeat.

“Well, it’s just… So usually I spend my, ah, season with Raguel, do you remember them, my dear? Very charming, you know, very good company even outside of, well. You know.”

Crowley nods to show she’s listening and carefully doesn’t examine the little twist her stomach makes, contemplating Raguel and Aziraphale … spending time together.

“Oh good, I hoped you'd remember… Anyway, they’ve finally settled down properly with Raniel – which is frankly about time, they’ve taken forever about it, I must _say_ –“ Crowley doesn’t roll her eyes at the way Aziraphale can never stay on topic, she _doesn’t_. “- You know, I was beginning to worry about Raniel’s nest starting to _gather dust_ if they’d taken much longer, and of course after all this, this _pining_ they’ve been getting up to, and _mutually _too, silly creatures – well, of course I’m really _very_ happy for them now that they’ve admitted it at long last, but… Well, inevitably that rather leaves me without an assigned partner for my next season, you see.”

Crowley swears she just felt the heart she doesn’t actually need stop beating. It is remarkably painful.

Feeling as if she needs to say something if she wants the conversation to keep going, for Aziraphale not to stall in the midst of his awkwardness, she finally manages to dredge up words from the pits of her lungs.

“Oh? Any word on who…?” She trails off, unable to think of a way to finish that sentence while they’re in public.

“Yes.” Aziraphale sighs, and looks so utterly miserable that Crowley can’t stand to look at him. “That’s what’s … bothering me, if you will.” He glances over at her before examining a bird circling high up in the distance with _great_ attention. “I’m rather afraid I’ve been assigned… Gabriel.”

_“Gabriel?!”_

Crowley could no more hold her objection inside than she could walk on holy water. The very idea – _Gabriel?_ Who thought that would be a good idea? She can’t have heard Aziraphale properly, there must be some mistake -

“Quite.” Aziraphale mutters, looking more and more disgruntled with every passing moment he thinks about it. “I can’t really say that I’m looking forward to it at all. Not that I did before, you understand, dreadfully messy business and all, and of course I can’t see … Well, _people_ on … on Earth, during the whole thing.”

Crowley clears her throat; speaking before she’s really thought her words through, desperate to cover the little voice in her head that promptly took up a rousing chant of _It’s you. He misses you. He misses you. He misses you._

“I can imagine so! I mean, _Gabriel_. Honestly, what do you think he’d even be _like_ in bed?” She nudges Azirapahle’s ribs a little, a wicked grin tugging at the corners of her mouth, despite the topic and the time and the place. “Do you think he’ll come up with motivational posters to plaster the wall with? Diagrams, maybe? Or will he mutter soothing slogans about productivity and efficiency the whole time?”

Aziraphale shoots her the look that says how very much he wants to laugh with her, but suspects that he shouldn’t. Crowley idly wonders if Aziraphale is worried that once he starts laughing at the archangels and their growing ridiculousness, he’ll never stop?

Aziraphale, having now provided the demanded explanation looks ready to drop the whole conversation and with a sudden jolt to her traitorous gut-feelings, Crowley abruptly loses control of her own mouth as she hears it utter the offer which will either damn her further or…

“Hey, look, if you don’t fancy spending the whole thing with Gabriel – and I get that, I mean who _would_? – how about… spending your season with me?”

Aziraphale looks almost as shocked at Crowley’s suggestion as Crowley herself _feels_. What has she just done? What was she _thinking? Was she thinking at all?_

Sadly her mouth continues it’s mission of self-sabotage and _keeps going._

“I mean, we’re friends after all, aren’t we? Or at least we’ve known each other for a long time, which I think counts as basically the same thing, right? And I know, I know I’m not an angel _anymore_ per se, but I was one, once. Wasn’t I? I know I might not have the same needs, but I’m sure that I can have all the relevant, ah, _tackle_ all ready to go, whatever you fancy really, no problem.”

She finally forces herself to _stop_ babbling and now can only wait to see how offended or disgusted Aziraphale is at the very thought.

Except…

Except Aziraphale looks neither of these things. Shocked, yes. He certainly looks like he couldn’t have been _more_ shocked had Crowley slapped him in the face with one of those five thousand fishes from a couple of years back. But he’s not… he’s not saying _no_.

“I…” Aziraphale begins, and then stops, and goes back to his astonished blinking. Crowley is worried that if the angel keeps that up and doesn’t give her a response any time soon she’s going to actually _shake_ an answer from him.

“I… Crowley, are you sure? I mean, I wouldn’t want to… take _advantage_ of you or anything.”

There’s a man over Aziraphale’s shoulder who has clearly wandered into this conversation at the wrong – or right? – moment. He’s staring at them, mouth agape and eyes popping. Crowley shoots the interloper a glare that would boil ice and he moves a little further away. She realises that Aziraphale is now waiting for _her_ to answer _him_.

“’Course I’m sure. Wouldn’t have offered otherwise, would I? Don’t know much about how angels ‘do it’, but I’ve researched a few things with humans; it can’t be all that different.”

Aziraphale wrinkles his nose a little, but before Crowley can ask him what he finds so distasteful, the angel's speaking again.

“I… Well, if you’re sure that you want to offer?” Then his eyes widen again a little, and his hands come up to start wringing themselves again. “Oh but, what would I say Upstairs? I can’t just not show up, after all, they might come and look for me. I shall have to think of a good excuse; something to tell Head Office that doesn’t sound like I’m actually _rejecting_ Gabriel…”

And that tiny spark of hope inside Crowley’s chest gets a little bit more fuel to fan its flames… That’s a terribly mangled metaphor, but Crowley doesn’t care. Aziraphale hasn’t turned him down flat. He’s not offended. He’s… he’s actually _considering it_.

Also, Crowley wonders to herself, how much worse had Gabriel become in these past few millennia, that Aziraphale would even for a moment think that trusting himself in such a vulnerable state to a demon is better than … than an _archangel of the Lord_? That’s a more awful a sign of the state Aziraphale’s side is in than anything else Crowley has ever heard the angel breathe between the lines of their little talks.

Aziraphale finally stops his mutterings to himself about needing to come up with a cover story if he can, and instead he squares those shoulders of his and looks Crowley straight in the eyes.

“Thank you so much for your generous offer, Crowley. I’m afraid that I shall have to take some time to consider it properly, I hope you don’t mind? May I let you know a little closer to the time?”

And sure, it’s not an outright _yes_, it’s not an acceptance. But Crowley will take the promise of a future she hadn’t known she could want so much while she has it.

She looks back up at the charming and surprisingly insightful young man once more. _The promise of a brighter future built up from the wreckage of a terrible today_.

Maybe Aziraphale’s on to something with this whole ‘ineffability’ line of thinking?


	4. (8 Years Later) Ancient Rome – 41 AD

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Aziraphale has an answer, and then a request, and Crowley makes a resolution or two...

They meet up again, this time in a bar. This will not strike Crowley as being deeply appropriate until several centuries later, but it is worth noting regardless.

Crowley is hunched over the bar, clutching his cup of house brown and generally hating Everything.

Bloody Rome. Bloody Caligula. Crowley was a demon and even he wasn’t so utterly dreadful, so foully vile. What was that guy’s excuse? Was he trying for a speed-run to Hell?

On the one hand, it meant that Crowley could clock off early and still report the whole mess as an amazing success. On the other, he was going to need to drink a _lot_ of wine if he wanted to stop watching the memories of what he’d found in Caligula’s rooms play behind his eyes. Crowley took another drink and wished desperately to be able to think of something else.

And then, coming from behind him;

“Crawly? Crowley? Fancy running in to you here!”

Aziraphale.

Crowley fought the urge to raise his eyes Upwards for a moment. She wasn’t much known for listening to the idle wishes of humans, She certainly wouldn’t have been looking out for a miserable demon.

Aziraphale moves a little closer, and Crowley thinks to himself that the angel’s tone and the expression in his eyes is a little off somehow. Like he’s relieved? To see Crowley?

Huh.

Aziraphale tries to make small talk; he’s frankly dreadful at it. How can an angel be so bad at striking up a conversation, Crowley wonders. And Crowley? Crowley just wishes he would stop it already. It’s all stilted and awkward and totally unnatural.

'Still a demon then.' Honestly. As if Crowley was ever going to be anything else!

Crowley tries hard not to think about the time when he had _been_ something else. It wasn’t like he could go back there, after all, and from everything he’s seen since getting to know Aziraphale, he’s increasingly sure that he’d never especially want to either.

Crowley pours the angel wine and they toast and drink. Maybe alcohol will ease Aziraphale enough that he’ll get to the point?

“_Salutaria!_ In Rome long?”

Ah, the notes in Aziraphale’s tones suggest that they are starting to turn in the right direction.

They swap notes on the jobs that brought them here, and Crowley keeps a keen eye on his drinking companion, waiting…

“So, Crowley, I’ve been thinking.” Aziraphale starts, and Crowley has just enough time to hold in a snarky comment on the dangers inherent to thinking when, “And assuming that you were serious at the time, and also assuming that you would still want to, of course you’re under no obligation. But… I should very much like for you to take me through my season, if you will?”

He just... he just came right out and _said _it. Crowley was so sure that they’d not get to talking about _this_ for another half hour at least, he’d unwisely taken another mouthful of wine at the time.

Crowley manages, by some divine miracle he’s certainly not responsible for, to _not_ fall off his bar stool, _not_ spit his wine out and _not_ fall all over himself to take Aziraphale up on this thing right here in the bar.

The angel’s relief is so profound, you’d never have known it was Crowley who suggested it in the first place. Silly angel. Good job he has Crowley to make the sensible decisions, really.

“Oh! Oh, that’s such a relief, you know, my dear. I should be starting up properly any day now, so I really did hope that you’d still be, ah, interested.”

Crowley snorts and finishes his wine to divert his mouth from the urge to answer _that_ comment a little too honestly.

“It’s no trouble at all, angel. With you gone, I’d have to find another drinking partner after all. This is pure selfishness, really.”

Aziraphale smiles and nudges Crowley’s shoulder; very carefully, as if he’s worried that Crowley’s balance on the stool is more precarious than it is.

“Of course it is, my dear.”

*

They pass along a few other meaningless topics, neither one wanting to rush this. Crowley keeps a close watch over his angel, but Aziraphale is mush as he always is, perhaps even more relaxed than he usually seems, his immediate problem now solved. Crowley thinks back on the angel’s relieved tones when he’d greeted him, and wonders if Aziraphale had worried that he’d not find Crowley in time. If this whole endeavour is successful, Crowley makes a note to himself, he’ll need to get better at checking up on the angel and being more generally … _around_.

Suddenly, Aziraphale brings up _oysters_ of all things. Strange, but Crowley senses that this is not a detour or Aziraphale losing his nerve. This is a topic with _subtext_. He smiles a little to himself as he goads the angel ever so slightly, just to see where the angel is going with this.

“I’ve never eaten an oyster.”

Aziraphale’s round face lights up, not with angelic grace but with a mixture joy and pure mischief. Crowley _stares_. He didn’t know the angel had such a wicked look within him.

_Oh, the things we will learn today…_

“Oh! Let me tempt you to … Oops. That’s your job, isn’t it?” And the angel’s eyes are bright with challenge now, and a hint of _invitation._

Crowley all but grins to himself. _Bingo._ He _knew_ this was heading somewhere promising!

They leave the bar and meander down the street. The silence goes on for just a beat too long, and Crowley wonders if ought to be providing Aziraphale with some sort of reassurance. Something about having satisfied lovers in the past? Something about stamina, perhaps?

“So, ah… I wonder if I might broach a … delicate subject, Crowley?”

Ah, his brave angel… For all his hesitations, Aziraphale is always willing to face his fears when he needs to.

“Oh? I can do delicacy, angel. Very good at delicate, me.”

Aziraphale casts him an amused look. “Well, I certainly do hope so, my dear.”

Crowley can’t help it; he sticks his tongue out at the angel, who giggles at the sight of its unnatural length and forked tip. Crowley will never not be surprised by Aziraphale, it seems.

Then the angel’s face goes sombre. “My dear, I know that you’re a demon –“ Crowley opens his mouth to retort, but Aziraphale keeps barrelling on past him, “and of course I am aware that you may have, ah, _obligations_ foisted upon you by your superiors or some sort.”

He side-eyes Crowley in case he wants to say anything, but seeing that there will be no response in either direction, he keeps going.

“And I’m very aware that _tempting_ is a large feature of your existence – and of course I don’t begrudge you at all for it, my dear boy – but I wonder… I would so prefer it if you might not, ah … _say_ anything about this in any of your reports?”

Crowley’s first instinct is to be outraged, actually properly offended at the insinuation. Then he blinks and takes a breath and forces himself to bite his own tongue for a moment and think about what Aziraphale is trying to say. What he means.

Crowley’s the Serpent of Eden. He basically _invented_ temptations, didn’t he? And he’s complained enough to Aziraphale about filling quotas and highlighting minor temptations – even actual acts of kindness, not the Crowley would ever stoop to calling them that out-loud - into big deals, hasn’t he? Can he honestly blame Aziraphale for worrying that he’ll end up as another mark in Crowley’s Lust column?

And Tempting an _angel_… Yes, that _would_ make a good report, wouldn’t it? Might even earn him a commendation or something.

If it were any other angel Crowley was doing this with, well… But of course, Crowley would never do this with another angel, not that he expects he would ever be _asked_. Aziraphale’s likely the only one who’d ever think of asking a demon for assistance with this, and Crowley is the only one, he thinks, who would likely treat that trust with the respect it deserves.

He takes another breath and looks Aziraphale right in the eyes to show him his own sincerity as best he possibly can.

“Aziraphale, I will swear to you on whatever you like, that I’d _never_, I wouldn’t use this, use you, for my own advantage. This is… well, look I don’t understand it, not really, but I’m willing for you to explain anything you want me to know and I swear that Hell will never find this out from me, not if there’s anything I can do about it.”

And Aziraphale smiles, soft and warm and totally worth Crowley having to nearly spill _feelings_ all over the pavement in front of him.

“Oh… Oh thank you, my dear. I, well I never _really_ doubted, of course not, but I… I’m so glad to hear you say it out loud for me. Thank you, Crowley.”

Crowley coughs and looks away for a moment, then grasps for a change in topic.

“So! Ah, where are we going?”

The angel’s eyes are dancing with mischief again.

“To Petronius’s restaurant, dear. I hear that oysters do _marvels_ for one’s, ah, vigour, shall we say? You’ll need all your strength for this, you wily tempter, you.”

Crowley’s own eyes widen in shock, completely taken aback by Aziraphale’s teasing and his, his _insinuations!_

“Oi! I’m perfectly capable of –“

Aziraphale laugh, gleeful and carefree as Crowley’s never seen him before, dancing out of Crowley’s reach when he swipes for him. He takes off running down the street, Crowley in hot pursuit and they tumble into the restaurant, breathless with laughter, and giggling like little rascals getting up to no good. Petronius gives them a hard look which quells them not at all, and they stumble to a table and try to eat oysters without making too many saucy comments. Well. Aziraphale tries anyway.

*

Later, Aziraphale takes Crowley up to a cosy bit of attic over top of a medical school’s scroll room. It’s quiet, he says, and the view from the window is quite lovely.

There are trinkets and mementoes scattered around the pile of pillows and blankets, and in between rounds Crowley asks him about them. Aziraphale happily tells every story, and Crowley makes a note to start looking for souvenirs of his own to give to the angel. He likes the thought of becoming a part of something so tangible in Aziraphale’s life.

“You’ve got a lot of stories, angel, you know that?”

Aziraphale tucks his head into Crowley’s shoulder and hums sleepily for a long enough moment that Crowley thinks he’ll drop off before giving him an answer.

“’S comforting, having one’s history around one. Helps keep me grounded, when everything else goes all off-kilter.”

“Ah.”

Crowley couldn’t really say he understands, but he makes a note of it anyway, and redoubles his resolution to bring Aziraphale trinkets from every trip, all the ones with jokes attached or good stories. Only the happy ones, of course, but he’s sure he’ll find a few. And if not, he’ll make sure he has a hand in more happy stories too.

Just to make Aziraphale smile, of course.


	5. Arthurian Britain – 537 AD

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which there are first Arguments, second Arrangements, and Aziraphale has high standards in more than just wine...

They have their first real, proper argument in a misty bog, while cold and damp in their armour. It reminds Crowley uncomfortably of Hell, with the rank smell of decay and rot all around him and the chill that seeps into his bones.

The setting, Crowley has to begrudgingly admit, is once again perfect.

“But the end result would be the same! We cancel each other out, angel.”

Crowley just doesn’t see what the big issue is! They already have one Arrangement going on, and it’s been going just fine, right? This is a brilliant idea; the angel just needs to see…

“Oh, come _on_, angel! We already know we can work well together.” _Very _well together. Like they were always meant for it, in fact. He moves a little closer to Aziraphale, so if physical proximity is the trick here. “What’s so difficult about just… adding a little bit extra Arranging into our busy lives? Conserve energy for more productive efforts, you know?”

Aziraphale is _not_ pleased; in fact Crowley might even go so far as to say that he’s actually _furious_, the way he hasn’t been in centuries. He’s all narrowed eyes and red face and Crowley tramps down hard on the urge to apologise when he doesn’t even know what he’s done wrong.

He also tries very hard indeed not to think about how Aziraphale looks _glorious_ like this, a little dishevelled and a lot riled up. Look, the demon has pulled his angel’s wing feathers for millennia now, and he can admit – if only to himself – that the results are reward enough so long as the angel isn’t really, truly upset.

Sadly, right now he is.

“Crowley, you _promised_ me, you _swore_ that you would never hold … _that_ against me, not ever!”

Crowley splutters, protests somewhat incoherently that he _isn’t_; honestly, he swears he’s not! He’d never do that to Aziraphale, the angel’s trust is too precious and too hard-won to ever risk it like that.

“I just thought – you know – that is was worth a shot?”

“No! Absolutely not! I am shocked that you would even imply such a thing. We are not even having this conversation. Not another word.”

Aziraphale doesn’t quite stamp his foot, Crowley notes with a tiny hint of internal amusement, but he certainly looks like he’d considered it for a moment before the armour got in the way.

“Right.”

“Right.”

Aziraphale turns to stomp off in a huff, and Crowley can’t resist the urge to call after him: “We’re still on for the next round of – you know – right?”

Aziraphale softens slightly as he turns back. “Of course we are.”

“Good. Right. Good, that’s good.” Crowley gestures awkwardly behind him. “I’ll just go and get back to – you know -“

“Fomenting?”

“Right.”

*

Aziraphale comes to find him, about a month later. Crowley had been eyeing up the ales in the tavern without much enthusiasm – he’d always preferred wine, much better taste – when a bottle gets set down on the table at his elbow and a more softly attired figure slides onto the corner bench next to him.

“Here, it’s better than anything they’ve got in their cellar, I promise.”

Crowley looks over, trying to judge if Aziraphale is still angry with him, but he’s obviously not. The way he’s snuggling in close to Crowley’s warmth says that loud and clearly enough.

Crowley wraps an arm around his shoulders, hugging him closer for a moment before snapping his fingers to get the cork out of the bottle.

“I imagine it is, all those high standards you’ve got in wine, angel.”

Aziraphale hums, all quiet and soft after the fire and noise of their last meeting.

“Not just in wine, you wily serpent. All I’ve done since last month is think about what you said. Wicked tempter.”

The words should be angry, should be an accusation, but Aziraphale only sounds fond and teasing and Crowley has never felt so honestly known and genuinely forgiven as he does right now.

_Oh, angel… The things you say to me…_

He leans in to speak quietly in Aziraphale’s ear – the tavern is picking up as the night draws in and the noise is making it hard to speak across any distance without shouting. And they’ve both done enough of that already, haven’t they?

“It wasn’t intended to be a temptation, angel. It was just a suggestion, just an idea. I can have other ideas instead if you like?” He runs the tip of his nose lightly along the curve of Aziraphale’s jaw, an invitation and a promise.

The angel giggles a little and turns his head to rub his own nose against Crowley’s a little. They’re in their own little bubble of quiet and calm in the noisy tavern, and whether by some miracle or natural common sense, the other patrons and staff know to leave them alone.

“Oh you! I’ve been thinking that it wasn’t entirely a bad idea. It’s just… Crowley, I tell you, I’m ever so worried that Michael might check up on me, find me out. And you really _don’t _want to get Gabriel upset with you. Certainly I don’t.”

Despite the warmth of the tavern and the demon he’s huddled next to, Crowley feels Aziraphale shiver slightly. He frowns and hugs him somehow even closer, as if his slight corporation could possibly protect the angel from those who frighten him so.

“I thought that was all settled now? Heaven bought the whole thing about you managing on your own down Here and Gabriel just shoved off on some other poor schmuck?”

“They did, he did. I just… Gabriel still sends me, ah, suggestions, every time.” Crowley vows to find these … suggestions… when they arrive in future and _burn them all_. “And I get the distinct impression that he’s not entirely prepared to let the matter go. I keep declining him, of course, but he always says something like ‘Oh I know how it is these days with some angels; all that playing hard to get, testing out their suitors. I’m not afraid of a challenge.’ I don’t want him to have an excuse to call me back to Heaven, Crowley, really I don’t.”

“Hey, hey now. That won’t happen, I swear it.”

Crowley can’t stand to see Aziraphale like this, huddled and small and frightened. Crowley was never much of a warrior, never liked fighting, but he’s painfully aware that he’d tear any angel apart who sought to touch Aziraphale against the angel’s own wishes.

“We’ll be careful, you and me. We’ve _been_ careful, haven’t we? No one suspects anything about you staying down here, do they?”

“No.” Aziraphale is calming as Crowley speaks, and his trembling eases up. “No, everyone’s fine with it. I expect they didn’t think much of it after I survived just fine the first time. I doubt anyone even remembers I have season down Here.”

Except for the archangels, they both think silently. Except for Gabriel.

“Exactly,” is what Crowley choses to say aloud. “And you’re so clever, angel and I’m a genius, right?” The angel giggles again, and keep loosening up. “We’ll be smarter than your lot Upstairs, or my lot Down There. We’ll be alright, I promise you.”

“And you’re sure you’ll be alright?” Aziraphale’s worry hasn’t vanished, it’s latched onto t anew target. Thankfully, this one Crowley can provide much more definite reassurance about.

“Ha! My lot have more to do than verify compliance reports from Earth. As long as they get the paperwork, they seem happy enough. I mean, so long as I’m seen to be doing _something_ now and again…”

Aziraphale looks at him then, and his eyes are _shining_, so much faith for an angel to have in the words of a demon. So much trust.

Crowley will never be able to believe how much trust Aziraphale puts in him, will never understand it.

“Alright then. Let’s try it.”

“Really?” It seems to good to be true, no matter the argument and the fear to get to this point. Demons don't get what they want in this world after all. That's the point.

Oblivious to Crowley's inner-angst, Aziraphale shrugs and gestures a little with his cup of wine. “Of course. Seems silly to spend all our time reducing the other to uselessness when we could actually achieve something worthwhile.”

Crowley all but forgets how to breathe in the face of Aziraphale’s agreement, not that he needs to.

They sit in silence for much of the rest of the evening, just curled up quietly, passing the wine bottle back and forth between them, sharing heat along with the drink. It’s like the quiet times of Aziraphale’s seasons, when they’re all curled up in his weird little nests and words have been abandoned for a far older language.

Crowley was cast out from Heaven so long ago, and Hell has never seemed a good fit for him at all. But here and now, he knows that these things were clearly inevitable and quite possible ineffable. How could he ever have fitted in either when he belonged here, curled up with his angel?


	6. The Globe Theatre – 1601

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Shakespeare keeps throwing off Crowley's game, Crowley gets his revenge and we, the audience, finally get a change in perspective...

Crowley saunters into the echoingly empty Globe Theatre, spotting Aziraphale with ease. Of course, even had the place been packed to the rafters, Crowley could have spotted his angel at once. Vested interest and all that.

Crowley has mixed feelings about the Globe – well, not the _Globe_ per se but more the playwright who worked out of there.

Aziraphale _adored_ young Shakespeare’s plays; cried at all the sad parts, hid his face in Crowley’s jacket at every murder – not that Crowley objected at all – cheered at all the heroics and got appallingly soppy over the endings where the romantic couples all got married. Crowley had made it a point to take the angel to as many performances as he felt he could get away with. It was like he was giving the angel a story to hoard all to himself every time; the most precious gift Crowley can ever give him as far as Aziraphale is concerned.

So on that account, Crowley was cautiously in favour of Bill Shakespeare. He made Aziraphale happy, which was always good. Crowley had _even_, though he would undoubtedly deny it vigorously even under the threat of torture, sat down in a tavern with Bill and given him hints when the play-write had got himself stuck for ways to conclude a particularly interesting plot.

On the other hand, Bill Shakespeare had clearly taken Crowley’s occasional encouragement far too personally, as he had developed the deeply unnerving and frankly rude habit of listening to Crowley’s sweet talking into Aziraphale’s ear and then using the demon’s best lines in his plays. Aziraphale, the traitor, thought this was adorable and hilarious by turns. Crowley did not appreciate having his feelings laid bare on a public stage like that.

Of course, Crowley had been gradually getting his revenge with this latest run. He’d never liked the gloomy ones, especially since the sight of Aziraphale’s tears cause Crowley actual pain inside his chest. Overly complicated, over-run with death and generally dreary all round, _Hamlet_ had been an ideal target; hiding the odd costume just before the curtain-call, sneaking in late at night to make slight changes to half of the scripts (and _crucially_ not the other half), Crowley had been having a whale of a time screwing with the Bard’s company…

The Second Arrangement had been a truly excellent idea, if he does say so himself, Crowley muses to himself as he makes his way over. It allows them to meet up more often without Crowley appearing to hover, allows them to have more to talk about than the questionable choices of the Almighty and Aziraphale’s … cycle.

Crowley moves around to slowly approach Aziraphale from behind the angel’s shoulder, getting a warm sense of satisfaction when the other being doesn’t so much a twitch in surprise at his sudden presence.

“Grape?” Aziraphale holds the bunch out, eager as ever to share his food. Crowley rolls his eyes, but he takes one anyway. The angel smiles at him a little before pretending to turn his attention back to the stage.

Before Crowley can get the conversation started properly, of course Bill pops up like the phantom from this bloody play. Crowley considers throwing the balding little irritant a flash of his True Face, but Aziraphale has a sixth sense for such urges in his companion and digs his elbow into Crowley’s ribs while Bill’s not looking.

“I’m wasting my time up here.” Burbage grumbles, proving himself to be the only man of sense in the whole theatre. Aziraphale doesn’t count in such an assessment, of course - Crowley amends hurriedly, even inside his own head - he’s not a man, he’s an angel.

Aziraphale, true to form, is the most endearingly terrible motivational speaker ever, when he’s just saying kind words to be polite rather than from any genuine belief.

“No, you’re very good. I love all the … the talking.”

Crowley’s already smothering laughter into his own beard when Burbage turns to him. As if _Crowley_, as a demon, is going to be any kinder. Well, Crowley allows, at the very least he’s better at lying.

“He’s not my friend.” Aziraphale flusters, all but stepping in front of Crowley as if to hide him away. If they’d been in a bedroom, Crowley thinks suddenly and irreverently, the angel might have actually attempted to hide the demon under the bed. Oh, he has to remember that image, and share it with Aziraphale later. Flustering Aziraphale will never get old. “We’ve never met before. We don’t know each other.”

“Except for Biblically, of course. Think that’s what he meant, angel?” Crowley whispers in his ear, sniggering. The elbow digs again, but now the angel is sniggering too, though he’s hiding it well. Burbage is looking more disgruntled by the minute.

“I think you should get on with the play.” Is all Crowley says audibly enough for Bill and Burbage to hear.

The sooner this depressing excuse for a play gets back on track, the sooner Crowley can get on with his flirting- or with his latest favour in service to the Second Arrangement, rather. Yes.

That excuse might hold a bit more water if Crowley wasn’t already murmuring little nothings into Aziraphale’s ear.

“Age does not wither nor custom stale his infinite variety.”

Aziraphale flushes, as he always does when Crowley flirts with him in broad daylight. Crowley is just fighting the urge to offer the angel a tumble that’s _distinctly_ out of season when Bill, as is sadly per the usual by now, ruins bloody _everything_ by listening in.

“Oh, I like that.”

And there went the moment. Bugger.

“What do you want?”

Crowley sighs, but he can’t resist a little bit of a tease, for the sake of the thing. “Why ever would you insinuate that I might possibly want something?”

“You are up to no good.” Crowley doesn’t live for Aziraphale’s fond look of pretend disapproval. He _doesn’t_.

“Obviously.” He replies, as airily as possible. “And you are up to good, I take it? Lots of good deeds?” 

And a few less good ones too, if Crowley’s any judge. His angel does tend to cause a bit of mischief, if there’s no demon around for him to be a good example for. Just as well Aziraphale has him, really.

“No rest for the, well, good. I have to be in Edinburg at the end of the week.”

And there’s the opening Crowley was waiting for. The rest of the conversation goes completely according to Crowley’s plan, except for the very end when Bill, as ever, nearly ruins everything. Crowley can never say ‘no’ to his angel's pleading eyes, can he?

Well, if Crowley as the one sabotaging the wretched play, he supposes it won’t take much to pull the thing back into shape. He could just stop hiding the wigs and the scenery for a week or so and call it a job done, right?

Ha! As if Crowley would ever put in a half-hearted effort when Aziraphale himself has asked him for something…

*

If asked, Aziraphale couldn’t have said if it had been the poetry whispered gently into his ear, the gentle tolerance of enthusiasms which Aziraphale is perfectly well-aware are irritating to others, or the way Crowley is always ever so firm about allowing Aziraphale his own choice of assignments, but as he rides away from London he’s suddenly struck by a thought.

What if he-? What if they -? _Can_ angels and demons form pair-bonds? Is that even possible?

Oh, but it _can’t_ be! Crowley had Fallen before the curse after all, this was all just an – an Arrangement.

For over one and a half thousand years. That’s a very long time for an Arrangement like that isn’t it? Humans would have just given up and called it _marriage_ long before now, wouldn’t they? If you’ve gone out of your way to actively keep someone in your life, and helped them out when they wanted it, comforted them when they needed it, shared their bed, their secrets, their passions…

But… that’s _humans_ though, isn’t it?

_They_ can’t have _bonded_, can they? Angels don’t bond by accident, surely. Not that Aziraphale has heard of anyway, little though he speaks to Heaven when he can get away with it…

And Crowley’s a _demon_ after all! No, it can’t be possible.

But … oh, but what if?

Aziraphale had been a little wistful about pair-bonds since Raguel had settled so nicely into his, but he’d never got along well enough with another angel to want to form one of his own. And besides Aziraphale had some serious concerns about relationships begun through obligation. He and Raguel had talked about it a lot during their time together, Raguel fretting and worrying about whether what they felt for Raniel was real and if she really felt the same, or if they both only felt what they thought they _ought_ to feel. Aziraphale had worked hard to explain to Raguel that if they were that worried about Raniel’s feelings, then it was probably real love rather than obligation.

Aziraphale wouldn’t want anyone to be his only through obligation, and more than he would want to be given to someone else the same way. The looming threat of being given to Gabriel had _really_ solidified that for him, had he needed it!

But …

But _Crowley_ wasn’t being obligated, was he? He’d suggested it because he’d wanted to, after all, and he’d always check in with Aziraphale a few years beforehand in case there was someone Aziraphale wanted instead.

Of course, that was ridiculous – who else would Aziraphale want if _not_ Crowley? Who would take such good care of him, and make him laugh and giggle not only after but before and ever during the whole tangle of limbs and souls and sighs? No one except Crowley, Aziraphale was perfectly certain, would think to do appallingly bad impersonations of people they’d met at the same time as he filled Aziraphale so perfectly.

Crowley was no Elise, no creation of Pygmalion; Aziraphale would never have thought to create him as he is. Crowley was so much more than that. Crowley was everything Aziraphale needed and never even knew he wanted. He was a constant whirl of surprise and vexation and challenge and care…

No Aziraphale would never ask for anyone else to share his season with; couldn’t even imagine doing so.

But at least Crowley’s little conversations allowed Aziraphale to perform his own checks in case it was truly Crowley who needed to be elsewhere or simply wasn’t very keen about the idea anymore, so there was no harm in them really.

He’d wait and see, Aziraphale thought. There was no rush after all.

*

A month later, Aziraphale came back to London to find _Hamlet_ to be the talk of the town, playing to sell-out audiences and with a summer progress planned to cover half the country… People exclaimed in the middle of public streets about how odd it was for their conversational partner not to have seen it yet, gushing about how Important and Meaningful the work was and encouraging all and sundry to attend it too!

_Well_.

Crowley had truly outdone himself this time, hadn’t he?

Aziraphale had had the distinct impression for some time now that Crowley – who is so good at picking up on the cues and tells of other people - thought he was being completely subtle and unobtrusive in his little displays of prowess. This tendency was both ridiculous and unbearably endearing, though it did have the downside that Aziraphale couldn’t pay him compliments about giving the game away.

Aziraphale, of course, noted every little demonstration of his demon’s esteem; food that was out of season, wines that were forbidden from importation, plays and concert tickets for shows that even Aziraphale hadn’t heard of yet. He treasured every trinket that Crowley brought him, the demon pretending every time that they were mere whims he’d happened to stumble across. For a demon, Crowley could be a truly terrible liar.

At this rate, Aziraphale was going to have to start giving the idea of building a proper Nest some very real consideration!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This may have more errors that usual - I've borrowed a laptop to keep writing on holiday and it's taking a bit of getting used to! I hope, despite the appalling lack of adequate proofing, that this chapter all hangs together? Writing on a train is always an interesting experience...


	7. Paris – French Revolution – 1793

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Aziraphale gets peckish, gets into trouble, and gets rescued. Crowley gets to be the voice of reason and sound judgement...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Special thanks to Hawkwind1980 for being such a big help in rescuing this chapter from being left stuck in the swamp of indecision and getting it finished! Your encouragement and fine wok in filtering out my terrible sleep-deprived ideas has been invaluable! The mistakes are all mine though...

In Aziraphale’s defence, he hadn’t been in his right mind at all when he made the trip to Paris for crepes. If he had, he’d have probably rethought the whole trip… Well, he’d have rethought his wardrobe at the very least… Probably.

The problem was … this season had just come on so much earlier and faster than any he’d had for at least 2000 years. He’d been caught completely off his guard.

To put it simply; Aziraphale had just been ever so distracted of late trying to find a suitable Nesting site; in a convenient location, decent size without being so large that they might rattle around inside of it, just the two of them. Nothing too ostentatious, too _showy_, but still meeting Aziraphale’s standards. Not to mention trying to think of a good reason for an angel to be purchasing a property of his own – most shocking from a Heavenly perspective without the context of Nesting. And Aziraphale was certainly not going to go about _telling_ Heaven about that. Dreadful thought.

He’d settled at long last on the idea of a bookshop in the end; they were becoming rather fashionable, he had heard on his walks about Town. He rather thought that he would enjoy speaking to other like-minded people about a shared love of books!

He’d hemmed and hawed about various locations; each with so many pros and cons. Aziraphale had never needed to rank different parts of Earth against each other before; he’d simply travelled around at will for so much of History, sampling things he liked, avoiding things he didn’t – unless he had no option, of course – it had been a novel experience all on its own, and he’d covered the walls and floor of his rented rooms with maps and notes and the like while he pondered…

The Mediterranean perhaps, to allow a certain reptilian being the opportunity to bask properly? The wines were lovely, of course, and the _food_… Oh, but Crowley had so many poor experiences stemming from all around that region, didn’t he? Wars and emperors and crusades and that one time he’d nearly got buried under volcanic ash and suffocated by the dreadful gases at Pompeii…

Demons could handle fire and heat far better than humans could, after all, but rock and ash weren’t occult beings’ strong suit any better than they were humanity’s. Aziraphale had received official notice to ignore the impending disaster, but Crowley had sent him what the demon called a ‘posted card’ from the city a few days prior and the angel had fabricated a hasty excuse to be in the city at the time, allowing him to rescue several citizens the archangel’s felt were too unimportant to care much about the actual intended date of their deaths. If one of those citizens happened to be a demon in disguise, well… Aziraphale had had no way of knowing after all, even had such petty details actually made it into the report he’d written about the whole incident. It had been an uncharacteristically heroic report for the principality, and it had taken Aziraphale quite some time to convince Heaven that he really _was_ a coward in the general run of things.

Crowley, poor thing, had been quite shaken by the whole ghastly experience for about a century, drinking a quite remarkable amount of wine and refusing to take any missions to Italy until nearly the thirteenth century! No, best not to risk bringing up any bad memories…

France, maybe, for the fine cuisine? Aziraphale could cheerfully start his Nest surrounded by the most exquisite pastry shops, and the operas, and the music and he and Crowley could both have such _fun_ with the lovely fashions – very different fashions, he had no doubt, but that just meant that they could take better advantage of the whole range, no? - and of course the wine would still be _excellent_. Oh, but things had been so very shaky there, and Aziraphale wasn’t at all sure he could stand the drama of the royal court - pretty as it all was – for long enough to try and stabilise the whole mess properly. Not to mention the risk of discorporation and the trouble an angel could get into, starting unsanctioned long-running projects.

Finally Aziraphale had chosen London, admittedly more on a whim than as a result of all his careful thinking. He’d been walking through Soho and one particular corner property had just … it had simply felt _right_, in some way that Aziraphale couldn’t explain or describe. It had even been for sale too, in a coincidence that he might have called miraculous, had he had anything to do with it at all.

Aziraphale had stepped inside the cozy building and he had _known_ all at once, that this place, this was the site for his Nest. Space downstairs for Aziraphale’s passions and his little interests, for him to express his true nature as both allure to his ... Aziraphale wouldn’t lie, to his _Crowley,_ and warning to his rivals. Space upstairs for the True Nest, the inner sanctum as it were.

Aziraphale had already moved his favourite, softest blankets up there, and was now in the process of piling pillows and feathers into a comfortable arrangement. Something about fussing with little details, and planning out the downstairs layout to best flatter his quirks and personality had been terribly soothing. Soothing and invigorating at the same time, as if Aziraphale was finally getting around to some terribly important task.

Which he supposed he was, really.

*

Aziraphale, unfortunately, wasn’t at all aware of his distraction – or what exactly he’d become so very distracted _from_ \- at the time, of course. All _he_ was aware of was the following three things; that he was hungry, that he wanted crepes, that he knew where to get crepes and then … and then he was just … gone.

Things had all got very confusing for a time, and when Aziraphale’s head had cleared for a bit in the nice cool darkness of the basement, he discovered that the basement was in fact a _dungeon_ and this strange but quite charming and oddly enthusiastic man was explaining about how he’d be _executed_ soon.

“That is Pierre. An amateur. Always he lets go of the rope too soon. You are lucky that it is I, Jean-Claude, who will remove your traitorous head from your shoulders.”

There was just something about Jean-Claude’s cheerful professional interest in killing other people which reminds Aziraphale uncomfortably of some of his colleagues in Heaven. He wonders somewhat disconnectedly if they had been exchanging notes about the art of a well-executed death. Maybe there was a news-letter? Aziraphale hoped very much that there wasn’t. And if there _was_, that no one would ever tell him about it.

Aziraphale has one truly _dreadful_ moment to wonder how in the world he got into this mess, another to realise that he really, _really_ doesn’t want to get discorporated – in general, obviously, but especially not _now_, not when Gabriel’s been getting increasingly _curt_ with Aziraphale every time they talk – and finally one last moment for the full horror to dawn upon him that his powers are all … wobbly. And slippery too, he can’t seem to grasp hold of them no matter how hard he reaches.

This is all very confusing and very inconvenient and Aziraphale wishes very, very hard that Crowley could be there. Everything makes so much more sense when Crowley’s with him.

“Animals don’t kill each other with clever machines, angel. Only humans do that.”

How postively _wonderful! _Miraculously, Crowley’s _there_. With Aziraphale. And he’s poking fun at Aziraphale and his clothes and his taste in food, the way he always does, which means that everything _must_ be alright, really.

Silly of Aziraphale to worry, really.

Of course everything’s alright, Crowley’s there.

“Why didn’t you just perform another miracle and go home?”

Aziraphale searches desperately for some excuse; he doesn’t really want to admit that his powers are feeling distinctly wonky at the moment, not next to Crowley’s fancy new party trick of stopping time like that.

“I was reprimanded last month. They said I’d performed too many frivolous miracles. I got a strongly worded note from Gabriel.”

Crowley’s face shows very clearly what he thinks of that, of Gabriel in particular, but then he takes a second look a Aziraphale and, in a display of rare self-restraint, he lets it go.

“You were lucky I was in the area.”

Of course Aziraphale’s lucky. He’s _ever so_ lucky to have Crowley, even if the demon _is_ starting to look at Aziraphale as if there’s something wrong with him, but Crowley can’t quite figure out what.

Aziraphale would worry about that more, but he’s still _hungry_, and he’s got Crowley so all he needs now is food and everything will be _perfect_.

“Well, anyway, I’m very grateful. What if I buy you lunch?”

*

The crepes are truly scrummy, just like Aziraphale knew they would be. Crowley keeps shooting looks at Aziraphale all the way through eating, peering into his eyes and _twice_ reaching out to touch Aziraphale’s forehead as if feeling for a temperature like the angel is a small child. It’s all very odd.

Still, Crowley has managed enough bites of his own meal to say complimentary things about the crepes, before pushing his plate over to Aziraphale to finish. Aziraphale would normally protest, at least a little, but these crepes are especially good, and he’s far too hungry to bother with the façade of a pointless argument he won’t win and doesn’t really want to.

Apparently, Aziraphale’s eager consumption of his dining companion’s meal is the final clue for Crowley, because he makes a sudden noise of realisation.

“Oh! Blast it all, angel, why didn’t you say something?!”

Aziraphale looks quizzically at him, still chewing.

“Say what?”

“Say you were… you know! In season! Why didn’t you just let me know?”

Aziraphale is so surprised by the sudden emergence of this topic, he actually pauses in his eating for a moment.

“In seas- oh, _honestly_ Crowley, that’s not due for _years_! I’m just peckish is all, and you never finish your meals. These crepes are far too good to waste, I’ll have you know.”

He goes back to his plate, shaking his head at his demon’s foolishness. Crowley is silent next to him, and when Aziraphale looks back to him, he sees that the demon looks completely stunned.

“You don’t know- how can you not _realise!_ I mean, I know I didn’t see it at first, but it’s not my body that does … _that_, is it? What if something had _happened_ to you while you’re –“ Crowley waves a frantic hand to indicate Aziraphale’s general state of being. “You know, like this? You need to be more careful!”

Aziraphale wrinkles his nose, too fuzzy to be properly annoyed, but still a little miffed.

“It’s nowhere near due just yet, Crowley. You’re being ridiculous. I’m not at all sure that being around all this –“ He waves a hand to indicate the banners and the cockades and the angry young men. “All this _mess_ can’t be doing you any good at all. You should come home with me, much more restful for you.”

Pleased with his own logic, Aziraphale casts about to ask for the check while eating a bit faster. That’s just what Crowley needs, isn’t it? To come home with him. Aziraphale doesn’t know why he didn’t think of it before.

“Oh angel…” Crowley sighs, looking worried and fond at the same time. “And you did warn me once that you weren’t normally regular, didn’t you? Guess I just didn’t listen properly. My fault, I ought to take better care of you, I promised to, didn’t I?”

Aziraphale can’t make any sense of what’s going on any more, but he’s finished eating and Crowley’s wrapping an arm around him, guiding him to stand up, so everything must be alright in general, even if Aziraphale’s not entirely with it.

“Come on, let’s get you … Huh. Do you think you’ve got enough time to get home? Or energy for that matter? Hang on, where are you even staying in London these day, angel? You said you were moving, but you’ve been dreadfully secretive about the whole thing, and now’s not a good time for you to get all hazy on the directions, I must say. Should we find somewhere around here to stay instead?”

Stay here? Go home? Aziraphale makes an immense effort and tries to think clearly. Crowley’s not happy, he’s looking all worried and he’s asking Aziraphale serious questions and not teasing him at all. Aziraphale can’t let Crowley down, not if he needs proper answers from him.

Why is it so hard to think properly, now he’s trying to? He hadn’t realised it was so hard to think like this… _Why is it hard?_

Something Crowley said pings back to the front of his mind; _“you did warn me once that you weren’t normally regular.” _

_Season…_

“Oh … _Hell!_” Aziraphale swears, furious with himself for being so foolish. Cold realisation sweeps most of the cobwebs from his mind, at least for a while, leaving the angel feeling a little embarrassed by everything. “And I never even realised… What a dreadfully _foolish_ thing to do, _really.”_

Crowley sighs in apparent relief. “Oh good, you’re back. Was getting a bit worried for a moment there. Can’t go around taking advantage of angels like that; a demon could get audited on that sort of thing, you know?”

Aziraphale considers sticking his tongue out at the demon, or something equally childish, but settles instead for a sniff and a haughty look that in not in the least bit convincing.

“Oh you wily serpent, you. As if you _would_. There now, I’ve eaten, and even bought you dinner too, look at that, and I assure you that I am fully capable of remembering the directions if you would be so kind as to do the, ah, _driving_ as it were. If you are still …” Aziraphale tries to find the most delicate way to put it, public restaurant and all. “…_amenable_, that is? It is a bit short-notice, I realise, but I hope you have nothing pressing on at the moment?”

Crowley grins at him, warm and soft now that they are both on the same page and Aziraphale is less of a bundle of confused instincts and more coherently able to make his own choices. Crowley hates having to make choices for other people, Aziraphale knows. It’s one of the things he loves so about him…

Huh. There’s that thought again.

“Come on then,” is what Crowley actually says. “We’ll make the most of this spot of clear-headed-ness - or whatever passes for that with you, mind, gotta grade on a curve with some people – and try getting you home properly. You like having familiar things around, I know.”

Aziraphale decides that dignity is for other people, people who _haven’t_ had such a trying day, and been _rescued_ and now are facing a few days of being reduced to a shivering wreck, in the best possible sense. He cuddles in close to Crowley, who holds him tight and hums a little in a soothing manner he’d deny if Aziraphale was ever foolish enough to even _mention_ it.

“You’re my familiar thing.” He mumbles into Crowley’s jacket and the demon splutters a little, but doesn’t let go of him.

“Angel. Home.”

*

It may have come early, but this time is _especially_ good. Something about being rescued by Crowley really works for Aziraphale and Crowley is all ramped up on protective adrenalin, inexhaustible and attentive and greedy beyond words.

Aziraphale knows - as he curls up on Crowley’s surprisingly cool chest and pants, while dawn tries valiantly to intrude on their well-earned rest - that he had been entirely right in choosing such a good location for his Nest. Not that he had shown Crowley around it officially yet, construction isn’t _nearly_ far enough along for that!

No, Aziraphale must get a proper layout settled, and collect all his treasures from their various hiding places around the world. He needs to have something _serious_ to show off to his demon, after all, otherwise how can Crowley understand that Aziraphale himself is serious about formalising their relationship properly? Jumping into displaying a half-constructed Nest smacks far too much of impulsiveness in an angel, and Crowley deserves much more consideration.

There are a great many feathers scattered around the pile of blankets and pillows, Aziraphale notes, and good intentions aside he feels a distinctly primal sense of deep satisfaction to see that his and Crowley’s are all mixed up together. He ought not to keep them here, he knows. He ought to get rid of them properly, bury them or burn them. But right now he’s tired, and Crowley’s sleeping, and Aziraphale wouldn’t disturb his demon for the whole world.

He blinks and the curtains close themselves more firmly for him.

He’ll attend to it later, he thinks.


	8. The Bookshop – 1800 – Part 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Gabriel tries to be smooth, Sandalphon tries to help, Aziraphale tries to disguise his absolute horror and Crowley tries out this acting business…
> 
> Based on the Deleted Scene from 1800, just before the opening of the bookshop.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks go to Hawkwind 1980, who very kindly nudged me until I tackled this chapter at last, and who has even more kindly taken on beta-ing for this chapter and indeed the rest of this beast! I really wouldn't have got this done with you; your thoughtful comments and your very helpful feedback were exactly what I needed to get on with this!
> 
> IMPORTANT NOTE: Slight trigger-warning for anyone who might need it: as anyone who'se already read the earlier chapters knows, Gabriel's got a really poor understanding of boundaries, and some major 'office creep' vibes. Proceed with caution if you think that might bring up bad memories, ok?

Aziraphale hums as he places books carefully on their shelves, feeling much more satisfied by the arrangement of the shop than he had been the last … five times he had tried to set everything out. It’s not his fault that he keeps changing his mind! This is his Nest for settling down with Crowley, after all!

Crowley knows all about Aziraphale’s high standards, after all. He teases him about them often enough. If the Nest is anything less than perfect in its very foundations, then what might that tell his clever demon? It _has_ to be perfect or he might not be successful! And then where would he be?

Anyway, this new arrangement is much more aesthetically pleasing and Aziraphale can finally feel like he’s making enough progress that Crowley can at last be permitted to view the Nest during its construction phase, to give feedback and praise as needed. Some angels skip the progress viewing, Aziraphale knows – he’d done a bit of careful research among angels he felt he could trust, after all – but Crowley’s such a creative thinker, such an artist, that Aziraphale really would feel better involving him at least a little. It might draw them closer together as a pair, mightn’t it?

The doorbell tinkles, and Aziraphale knows that it isn’t the movers this time, because they’ve finished for the day. On the one hand, having people coming already to look around the shop suggests that Aziraphale has certainly got the outside display perfect at last. If humans can’t resist its appeal despite the ‘Closed’ sign on the door, then Crowley will doubtless be impressed. On the other hand, there’s far too much to be getting on with for Aziraphale to stop and deal with people now…

“I am afraid the shop will not be open until Friday, good people. But we will be having a grand opening immediately after lunch…”

“We aren’t here to buy books, Aziraphale.”

And Aziraphale goes cold, all the way down to his Grace. _Gabriel_.

_No._

“Oh. Oh dear.”

He turns around, dread pooling in his stomach, but Aziraphale is an angel, he’s a principality, he was a guardian in_ Eden_, wasn’t he? He can be brave, he _can_.

It isn’t only Gabriel here, at least. Sandalphon is with him, and while Sandalphon is not the first angel Aziraphale might have thought of for providing comfort and a feeling of safety, he is the best Aziraphale has right now, and he is unspeakably glad to see him.

Although…

Aziraphale is really quite _distinctly_ miffed that Gabriel and Sandalphon have entered his fledgling nest before Crowley officially gets to – that one time straight after Paris doesn’t really count as Aziraphale hadn’t properly started anything at that point, and the demon has been gently but firmly banned from the premises for the past few years. Whatever the archangels have come wanting, it’s not a promising start to the conversation.

And _really _now, whatever _are_ two archangels doing here, down on Earth, standing in his fledgling Nest – his bookshop, rather. Why have they come?

“Listen, if it’s about that business in Paris, um, it wasn’t my miracle…”

It is a dangerous thing to bring up, Aziraphale knows, but Paris is the only thing he can think of that might be worthy of two archangels visiting him in person to deliver the reprimand. Surely word of Aziraphale’s questions on Nesting hadn’t gotten back to them, had it? Aziraphale had only spoken to those he trusted to keep it secret after all…

Gabriel pulls himself up very tall, very stiff and looks so pompous that had Aziraphale not been fighting the urge to put several bookcases between them he might have laughed. Crowley, he thinks to himself a little irreverently, will find this moment very amusing to imitate at some later date. When the demon’s protective rage has spent itself, at least.

“I have no idea whereof you speak, oh Angel of the Eastern Gate. We are here with good news.”

Aziraphale blinks. Good news? For him? What on earth…?

Still, it’s not a reprimand, and it’s not a demand that Aziraphale come immediately back to Heaven and … do anything with Gabriel. That already means that this will be the best news Aziraphale can imagine right now.

“Oh! How lovely.” He prepares himself for Good News, and stifles a hysterical giggle at the completely out of place thought that this must have been what dear Mary experienced back in Nazareth when Gabriel visited her with his much-vaunted Glad Tidings of Great Joy. Crowley will get a kick out of that thought too…

_Focus, Aziraphale…_

“We’re bringing you home.” And Gabriel has the bloody _nerve_ to smile while he says it to. Like he hasn’t just stomped all over Aziraphale’s carefully-nursed dreams.

Things only go downhill from there. Sandalphon joins in.

“Promoting you back upstairs.” He’s smiling too, the bastard. Or he thinks he’s smiling at least. He’s not very good at it, Aziraphale thinks snippily. He should give it up as a bad job.

Aziraphale’s first instinct is to scream his denials, to cry, to refuse to obey for once in his life. Then his eyes dart around the bookshop, taking in the gleaming wood, the boxes of books yet to be unpacked, the comfortable armchairs he had sourced specifically because they were slightly too big for one person (assuming that person did not occasionally have wings to accommodate), but not nearly so big that two people could fit into them without being _extremely_ friendly with one another. He thinks about all his efforts to settle the upstairs flat into the perfect inner-Nest, and in the Other Plane he can feel his wings start to rise and fluff themselves out in defensive aggression.

This is _his_ Nest. They can’t take it away from him without a fight, but perhaps he can … lead them to rethinking their dreadful decision without it coming to blows?

Snarling will accomplish nothing just yet, but he has not spent over 5000 years running around with a demon – and such a wily serpent of one to boot – without picking up a few tricks of his own, so Aziraphale takes a deep breath and wills himself to be calm.

This isn’t about promoting Aziraphale, he realises, not really. He had known that Gabriel was getting impatient with him and his excuses, had he not? He ought to have prepared for this moment better, silly angel that he is. But he’d been so caught up in the excitement of maybe, possibly, laying the foundations for Crowley and he to… Well. Fine. He can handle this now, regardless of his unpreparedness. Gabriel’s tastes run towards strength and efficiency, all things Aziraphale has but little of.

All he needs to do to make Gabriel rethink this is show him. A strange sort of anti-display, as it were…

He pulls his hands up to visibly wring them. He makes his eyes go big and soft, all misdirected eagerness. He brings forth all the fuss and fretfulness that he can, all the things that Crowley always likes to tease him for. Trying as hard as he can to be too small and soft to be considered an angel worthy of promotion to anywhere. To be easily forgotten about and dismissed, looked upon with disfavour enough that Gabriel will realise how ill-suited they are and go looking elsewhere. Leave Aziraphale alone down here on Earth to get on with his life.

“I’m opening this bookshop on Friday. If Master Hatchard can make a go of it, then I think I can really…” He twitters away like a pet dove, but Gabriel flashes him another of those too big, too bright smiles that Aziraphale desperately wants to lean away from and talks straight over him.

“It’s an excellent idea. Whoever replaces you down here can obviously use it as a base of operations. A settled pair, perhaps, someone who’ll need a fixed place to live and Nest in as well?”

And now Aziraphale cannot keep the outrage out of his voice at all.

“_Use my _bookshop? As a _Nest?_”

The worst part is that Aziraphale can’t even be properly territorial with his unwanted visitors, his supervisors threatening to take everything from him and make him thank them for it. Nests are sacred after all, and any angel in Heaven or on Earth knows better than to interfere with nesting … but admitting that _he’s_ building a Nest of his own in this bookshop would naturally bring up the question of _who_ Aziraphale is planning to nest with, which will likely not go over well with the rejected suitor standing before him.

Speaking of which, Gabriel is still standing there, looking confused that Aziraphale has not so much as smiled at the news, the prospect to leave Earth and all it holds behind. He ignores Aziraphale’s question and mounting outrage, repeating himself as if Aziraphale has simply missed the point.

“You’re being promoted. You get to come home.” The archangel pauses for a moment before continuing in what he clearly thinks is a soothing manner. Aziraphale has never felt less soothed. “It’s not good for you, Aziraphale, stuck down here with no one to talk to, all alone. What if your season came, huh? Then what?”

Aziraphale flinches then, pulling back into himself and Gabriel reaches out, probably to try and steady him, but all Aziraphale can see is hands trying to catch him and he dodges, fighting the urge to run. Gabriel retracts his reaching hands, holding them up in what might be surrender if he didn’t keep advancing on Aziraphale’s retreating form, didn’t keep _talking_.

“I know, I know they don’t affect you so much with you being down here. And I know you’ve been so much stronger than them so far. But you can’t fight it forever, Aziraphale and you should let m- let _someone_ take care of you. Properly. The way you _deserve_.”

Aziraphale shakes his head. “Oh, I really don’t think that-“

Sandalphon joins in then, his tone a little sneering, which Aziraphale does not take personally at all. Sandalphon has always sneered; it’s just how his face is made. He’s an over-enthusiastic smiter and he has no concept that some people do not appreciate the kind of horseplay that he thinks is friendly, but he’s not a bad angel deep down, Aziraphale has always thought. At the very least, Aziraphale is grateful that at the sound of a third voice Gabriel apparently remembers that he is not alone with Aziraphale and pulls back to a more respectable distance.

“I can’t imagine why anyone would want to spend five minutes longer in this world than they had to. Messy place, isn’t it? All that Sin coating everything, and the useless customs about relationships. Humans, always so quick to make everything more difficult than it needed to be. You’ll be glad to get off this rock and back to doing something worthwhile with your time, I should think?”

Gabriel glares at Sandalphon then, rounding on his companion as if it were _he_ who has been slighted. Aziraphale sees not the insult, but an opportunity and he struggles to make the most of it.

“Oh, I know, it’s such a lot to get used to, especially all at once.” He worries that his ‘friendly’ smile might be looking a little manic, but he keeps going regardless. “Why, when I think of all that has changed only in the last fifty years! Such a lot to take in all at once if you’re not, well, on the ground, so to speak! You know, I realise the opportunity you are bringing me, but I really do think that for the benefit of our efforts, it might be best if we -“

Gabriel, as he is so often wont to do, speaks right over him and Aziraphale feels his eyes rolling upwards to seek strength from On High. She listens to prayers, doesn’t She? Surely She will take pity on him…

“Aziraphale has been here for almost 6000 years. We must applaud such devotion to duty, such selflessness in facing the risks of staying here even at the risk of spending his seasons alone, turning down suitors and such. Very dedicated, our Aziraphale is, don’t you say?” He opens a little box to reveal a medal, flashing it to Aziraphale along with that blinding smile with the far too numerous teeth. “And it hasn’t gone unnoticed, Aziraphale, I assure you. _I_ certainly have taken note.”

Aziraphale knows his lips are curling in distaste, but he really can’t help it and nothing he is saying in this whole wretched interview is making a jot of difference anyway.

“I don’t want a medal.”

Gabriel nods, as if Aziraphale has said exactly what he ought to. “That’s very noble of you.”

Aziraphale eyes the door desperately and sees quite possibly the very worst possible thing he could_. _Crowley, standing outside the shop, holding a package, looking through the open door with a cheery wave. Oh, dear…

Aziraphale has only himself to blame; Crowley had taken him out to dinner last week, and had asked in what the demon had clearly believed to be a casual manner, when he was going to be issued an invitation to visit Aziraphale’s new passion project, as he’d put it. Crowley has been doing that a lot, recently; coming to take Aziraphale 'out on the town,' as he liked to call it, far more regularly these days than they’d ever done before in the whole of their time on Earth! Aziraphale wonders, sometimes, whether it’s just that he’s got the shop now, and of course Crowley already knew about the flat above it, and so now Crowley knows where to look for him. He wonders if Crowley used to want to see Aziraphale this often, but simply hadn’t known where to look and had no way of asking.

And what had Aziraphale done that night last week, tipsy as he was on such lovely wine and all his boundaries down in the face of Crowley’s soft presence and gentle grin, his glasses abandoned carelessly on the table before being confiscated by Aziraphale in a fit of mischief? Why, he’d giggled and said that Crowley was welcome any time after the movers had left, that’s what. Crowley must have been more eager than Aziraphale had thought, must have kept an eye out until the conditions for a visit were met and set out straight away.

Aziraphale’s eyes dart away from Crowley’s figure, panicked, to take in Gabriel and Sandalphon. He sighs a little in relief; She may not have answered all his prayers, but She has allowed him this one small mercy. They haven’t noticed Crowley, standing behind them as he is. The demon could still escape to wile another day…

Wait…

That’s it! Crowley continues to be the answer to all Aziraphale’s prayers, blasphemous as the thought might be.

He raises his voice just a little, hoping the sound will carry to Crowley and warn him off, even as he plans to seeds of another objection. “But only I can properly thwart the wiles of the demon Crowley.”

Crowley, Aziraphale notes from the corner of one eye, stops smiling. He looks hurt for a moment, and then his expression morphs into just plain confusion_. _

He points to the package he has brought, and – absurdly - mouths “Chocolates.”

Aziraphale tears his gaze away and fights the inappropriate urge to giggle. Really now, this entire scene has truly devolved from a tragedy into a farce and he’s going to lose his composure completely in a moment!

Gabriel, thank Heavens, continues to be oblivious to anything not directly linked to his own interests, and is still talking, unaware that Aziraphale’s attention has waned.

(Outside of the bookshop, Crowley’s eyes have widened on hearing a familiar and much loathed voice, taking in the sight of Gabriel with horror and concern. Then he must have understood what is a stake and he ducks a little out of the archangels’ sight, though remains where Aziraphale can see him if he needs the comfort.)

“I do not doubt that whoever replaces you will be as good an enemy to Crowley as you are. Michael, perhaps.”

Crowley pantomimes looking utterly horrified, lightening Aziraphale’s spirits with his antics even as he fights to keep his face straight. He’s mouthing “Michael? Michael’s a wanker!” at Aziraphale, who has to turn and look more fully at Sandalphon’s stony expression before he loses his composure entirely.

“Crowley’s been down here just as long as I have. And he’s wily, and cunning and brilliant and oh…”

Too late, he realises his mistake. Gabriel’s eyes have narrowed now, and he stands closer to loom over Aziraphale in a manner much less friendly than before.

“It almost sounds like you like him.”

“I loathe him.” Aziraphale scrambles to reassure his audience, cursing himself for his weakness. “And, despite myself, I respect a worthy opponent… Which he isn’t because he’s a demon and I cannot respect a demon. Or like one.”

Gabriel’s smile is back, and Aziraphale has never been so glad to see those overly-shining teeth in his life. His knees threaten to give out and he gropes behind himself for the bookcase, needign something solid to hold onto.

“That’s the attitude I like to hear. You’ll be an asset back at head office, I can tell you that.”

Crowley has disappeared by the time Aziraphale’s eyes flick back to check. He feels a little bereft for a moment, but hopefully his clever demon has thought of a plan to get them out of this mess once again. And if not? Well, goodbyes were never their strongest suit.

Gabriel comes forward and Aziraphale wills himself not to cower or flinch as the archangel’s hands reach for him again. Sandalphon’s eyes have narrowed a little, he thinks, but that might just be the other angel’s face, and he’s far too distracted by Gabriel, who puts the hated, awful medal around Aziraphale’s neck.

“So… We’re going straight back, now? Before the grand opening?”

Aziraphale doesn’t know what answer he wants; to have it all over and done with if he can’t persuade them out of it, or to buy himself a bit of time to think of a different escape. He learns his answer at the swell of relief when Gabriel shakes his head.

“Well, soon. We’re just going to stroll down to Cork Street to see my tailor. Got to look my best when I bring you home, haven’t I eh?” He claps Aziraphale on the shoulder and the smaller angel somehow resists the urge to show his own teeth at the unwanted touch.

Gabriel pauses, still looming over Aziraphale, still _touching him_, for a long moment, until Sandalphon clears his throat pointedly.

“We should be back by three, Aziraphale. I trust that you will have everything in order by then?”

Aziraphale nods wordlessly, hands gripping the bookshelf behind his back to remain upright, mind racing.

They leave, and Aziraphale can breathe again.

They leave, and Aziraphale can only hope that Crowley’s plan, if he has one, works.

An angel putting his faith in a demon… What a thought that might be if that angel hadn’t made a habit of it for coming on for a thousand years by now.

Crowley’s never let him down before, after all.


	9. The Bookshop – 1800 – Part 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Crowley makes his bid for an Oscar that hasn’t been invented yet, Sandalphon is the voice of reason, and Gabriel continues to be wrong about everything.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It lives! As do I!
> 
> Thanks again to Hawkwind1980, who has sat through more grumbling from me while I failed at writing anything worth reading than can probably be healthy! Without your gently poking me I'd have given up long ago, and actually I think this chapter came out better than it had any right to, so that's all to your credit!
> 
> The mistakes are all mine, of course...

Crowley’s eyes, safely hidden behind his dark glasses as they are, all but spit Hellfire as he darts away from Aziraphale’s Bookshop.

_Those bastards! Trying to take Aziraphale away from him like this!_

He’d been pushing his luck, he knew, visiting the bookshop today as soon as the movers had left. It likely wasn’t at all what Aziraphale had meant when he’d said Crowley couldn’t come by until then, but the angel likely wouldn’t have been surprised. They’ve wiled and thwarted together for so long by now, the angel knows he needs to be more careful with his word-choices if he doesn’t want Crowley to take the full mile when the angel dangles a careless inch.

He’d been, perhaps, a _little_ bit eager to finally see whatever it is that Aziraphale has been working on so hard for years. It’s not like the angel to keep secrets; in fact it’s hard to stop him from blurting every single bit of news he can think of to Crowley within the first hour of their meeting up most of the time. Aziraphale’s eagerness to share everything he can with a demon – food, news, thoughts, dreams, _himself_ \- is one of those wonders Crowley will never understand but gives endless thanks for nevertheless.

And what does the demon find when he arrives? Oh, what indeed!

At first he’d been hurt to hear his angel speak of him like that to strangers; they surely meant more to each other than just adversaries, didn’t they? And who on earth would Aziraphale need to impress enough to put Crowley down to them while looking the demon right in the eye the whole time?

And then that wanker, _Gabriel_, had spoken and everything became horrifyingly clear…

Crowley stumbles along after the archangels, keeping to the shadows and trying to pull his infernal essence as close to his body as he possibly can. He can’t let them notice him, not yet. Crowley’s good at sneaking, always was, always will be. The form of a snake crawling through the long grass was not an accident of his Falling, after all; it’s fundamentally who he _is._ His strengths are his ability to be inconspicuous, his eyes and ears and his cunning. Crowley’s under no illusions about his ability to singlehandedly fight two archangels if it came down to it, even as furious as he is. No, this is going to take brains, not brawn…

He has to keep as close as he can though, needs to be close enough to listen and try to find something, _anything_, to help him get Aziraphale out of this mess. Promoted back to Heaven indeed. As if taking Aziraphale away from Earth was anything but a punishment, any fool could see that he was happy here.

Though in Crowley’s opinion, Heaven had something of a surplus of fools to go around, so perhaps he shouldn’t have expected better?

“…you absolutely sure about this, Gabriel?” Sandalphon says as the two round the corner and stray close enough for Crowley to hear them. “He’s not wrong, you know. He’s been down here since the Beginning and it won’t be easy to find anyone to replace him like this.”

“Are you questioning me? You didn’t say anything in the staffing meeting when I brought it up.”

Hidden in the shadows, Crowley raises an eyebrow. Hmmm… not such a united front as he might have expected, it seems…

Where Gabriel is all bluster and narrowed eyes, Sandalphon bears the careful tone of someone who wishes very much to stop the cart before it hits the market stalls. Perhaps Crowley only needs to place his Doubts into one angel’s head after all; Sandalphon’s got enough Doubts here for the whole street by the looks of things.

“I’m just saying, Gabriel, he seemed awfully certain that he was needed down here. I’m not sure we’ll be able to simply replace him just like _that_.” Sandalphon actually snaps his fingers just for emphasis. Crowley didn’t think _anyone_ did that. “Have you actually been reading his reports?”

Gabriel shakes his head, and Crowley silently rolls his eyes. Aziraphale puts a hell of a lot of time and effort into those reports; Crowley _knows_ because they’re usually due around the time when Crowley would quite like to whisk his angel off to some distant corner of the globe for a tempting meal and a … and a nice view of the sunset or something, naturally.

Ahem.

Anyway, the point _is_ that those reports are the bane of Crowley’s existence and it would just go figure that Aziraphale’s boss doesn’t even read them.

“Of course you haven’t.” Sandalphon, to his minor credit, sounds equally unimpressed, though his interest in the topic is likely rather different to Crowley’s. “Well if you _had_ then you’d know that it’s a bloody mess down here! The fashion changes every year, they keep changing what words mean, and that’s when they’re not just coming up with a new language out of nowhere –“

It’s not out of nowhere, Crowley thinks to himself, there’s a transitional phase and hold-overs and, and it doesn’t matter, he’s never going to talk to an angel long enough to explain it. Aziraphale’s not wrong; these things really do make a lot more sense when you’re on the ground and watching it happen…

“- and they’re weird little rituals around _food._ I’ve read more about knives and forks than I ever care to, but Aziraphale said they were really important; can ruin a whole mission if you use the wrong ones and they get suspicious. And if you think anyone else has got their heads around it all properly, you can think again, Gabriel! What’s Aziraphale going to do? Spend his first century back Upstairs giving endless seminars to try and catch people up? No one’s got time for that.”

“Oh that’s just Aziraphale, you know?” Gabriel waves a dismissive hand. “His dedication and willingness to sacrifice himself for the cause is a credit to us all.”

It’s not that Crowley doesn’t like hearing people compliment Aziraphale, the demon grumbles to himself, but he’d rather it wasn’t Gabriel, and he’d rather it didn’t sound like the building blocks to a cunning scheme. Crowley’s a demon; he is the _king_ of cunning schemes after all. He can spot another’s technique easily enough.

“Listen,” Sandalphon sighs, sounding tired and unhappy, “I’m just saying, you’re gonna look pretty stupid going to all this effort to get Aziraphale back up to Heaven on all those trumped up excuses – don’t think we’re fooled, Gabriel, us archangels, we _know_ you - if he still doesn’t have seasons.”

Gabriel waves the idea away again, and Crowley smiles a secret smile only for his own amusement. Oh, ‘Aziraphale doesn’t have seasons’ indeed! Crowley’s a demon; it’s totally acceptable for him to feel seven kinds of smug all at once. It’s very commendable demoning, really.

“He’s had them before, back with Raguel though.” Gabriel is too old and too big, even in his human form, for the whining tone of his voice to be even slightly dignified.

Sandalphon obviously agrees, because while Gabriel’s not looking he rolls his eyes.

Gabriel may have sensed his companion’s scepticism regardless. “No, I mean it! He _definitely_ had them back then. It’s just all the effort he has to use up thwarting the demon is all. He’s not got the energy to spare. It can’t be good for him, so tired for so long…”

Sandalphon snorts, blunt and disbelieving. “Yeah, I know he _says_ that. But you know what everyone’s saying Upstairs though, don’t you? That he’s been down here too long. He’s lost his connections to the Host and that’s why he doesn’t come into season properly anymore. What if he can’t get that back? Huh? What then.”

Gabriel snarls, actually snarls and his whole body twitches as if he’d like very much to throw his fellow archangel up against the wall and hit him. Instead, he just looms right up and into Sandalphon’s face, teeth bared like a baying hound.

“You take that back! There’s nothing wrong with Aziraphale that a nice desk-job won’t fix up. You know some of them Upstairs can end up missing a season when they get a bit run down.”

Sandalphon, Crowley note idly to himself as he privately hopes for a proper fist-fight to develop, clearly has more spine than Crowley had previously credited him with. Oh, it didn’t take any courage at all to smite defenceless humans, did it? But it must take real moral strength to look into Gabriel’s furious eyes and persist in telling him something he didn’t want to hear.

“But they don’t just _stop having them_ like this, Gabriel! See sense! And even if he recovers, what then? What if he turns out to be more like Michael? All cuddles and quiet and no… everything else? Would you truly be able to put your own wants aside for him? Or would you go elsewhere for your own seasons and demand a commitment from him you will not return?”

Sandalphon actually reaches out, slapping a hand across the back of Gabriel’s dense skull and Crowley wishes he could share this moment with Aziraphale because it will be one of his most treasured memories of all time. Sadly everything else about this conversation will never, so long as Crowley draws breath, ever reach Aziraphale’s ears. The angel doesn’t deserve to hear what Heaven thinks of him. Crowley might be a demon, sure, but he’d sooner drink Holy Water and burn to nothing than be the one to break Aziraphale’s heart like that.

“_Think_, Gabriel! Is your ego at being refused something truly so bruised that you would deprive Heaven’s cause of its best operative on Earth to soothe it? Find someone a bit better suited for you to court.”

By the time Sandalphon has finished, he’s no longer relentless and snapping; he just sounds tired. Gabriel must sense the shift too, by some miracle of unknown origins, because he backs off a little and speaks more quietly, looking intently at his shoes.

“We _are_ suited, I keep telling you! We’re both dedicated to the cause, and –“

He breaks off at Sandalphon’s sigh. That and the archangel’s pitying expression.

“Leave Aziraphale down here, Gabriel. Maybe his whole story is even true, after all. It’s not a bad excuse, at the very least. Leave him his pride, whatever of it he might have, all that twitching he does, the soft creature…”

“Just because he preens a lot around me, Sandalphon, it’s not-“

Sandalphon cuts him off, impatient and cutting in a manner that Crowley would have appreciated more if he weren’t still talking about Aziraphale like the angel is theirs to discuss or distribute like a sack of extra flour.

(Crowley’s listened and read between the lines of what Aziraphale has told him down the years; he knows that there’s a system of sorts. It is clearly a flawed and broken system, because it would never in a million years match Aziraphale’s name with _Crowley’s_ and, since they are frankly perfect together in Crowley’s own modest opinion, therefore the system is balderdash. As if any of those feathered wankers up there could take as good care of Aziraphale as _Crowley_. Please.)

“He doesn’t preen around you, Gabriel, he twitches. And… look, maybe he’s a twitchy guy, I know you might think it’s normal, and lots of angels act like that around you - and it’s only you, mind. Nerves, I suppose - but maybe you’re making him uncomfortable? Have you thought of that? “

“Uncomfortable? Why would he be uncomfortable around me? I’m very nice to him.”

“‘Course you are. Everyone knows you like him. I just … look, I know you want him back home and all, and I know you’re looking forward to … settling down. But…”

“But?”

“But … look, maybe he’s broken, maybe he’s tired; but he’s never complained about either and you’ll not find any volunteers to take his place. For one thing no one wants to risk losing their ties to Heaven like that, never mind all the sin and vice that stains this place. And if you force someone into this you’ll still be buried under all the complaints and letters of protest when Armageddon comes. Leave him alone, Gabriel.”

“This conversation is over, Sandalphon. I know what I’m doing here.”

“No, Gabriel, you don’t. Just think about it, alright?”

Gabriel says nothing further, just pointedly leaves Sandalphon waiting outside of the shop and goes in alone. Crowley keeps to the shadows and slithers into the alleyway beside the shop, heading towards the back. There has to be something helpful to him back there somewhere…

*

As Crowley slides into the welcome darkness of the alleyway behind the tailors, he can hear Gabriel exchanging absolutely no pleasantries with the man who greets him at all.

“Davidson? Is my suit finished?”

The archangel clearly couldn’t care less about the man except for having him bring his suit to him.

Crowley shakes his head as he starts setting up the props he needs to really sell this crazy plan. Simplicity is key; too much staging and the archangel might suspect a trap.

_Aziraphale_ cannot make it through the door of any shop, restaurant, theatre, anything without at least ten minutes of catching up with the server’s entire family, various side-projects or interest and preferably three pieces of juicy gossip. Crowley’s pretty sure that gossip is un-angelic, but Aziraphale calls it ‘taking an interest in one’s surroundings and the concerns of one’s local area.’ The angel was so utterly earnest, so completely convinced that it was in fact _very_ properly angelic of him to chatter away with anyone who’d stand still long enough that Crowley had had to really think about it afterwards before coming to the conclusion that this was rubbish. Aziraphale can be like that sometimes. It’s part of his inner-bastard that Crowley just can’t look away from.

Crowley smiles to himself, fond even through his panicked improvising. Aziraphale might have a strange way of showing it sometimes, but he cares _so much_ for people. Ordinary people, people who will never change the world or become saints or inspire goodness in countless others. People with little lives and little joys and little worries that Heaven would never have the time, countless angels though there may be, to take note of.

But Aziraphale _does_. He listens to them, he does them the courtesy of remembering the things they tell him, and when he encourages them he does so far better than an archangel could ever hope to.

Not for Aziraphale the bland generalizing of ‘Glad tidings of great joy, I bring.’ Crowley has watched before when Aziraphale has breezed into the life of someone he has heard of from three other sources, and complimented them so sincerely on their good qualities that Crowley had been forced to remember an urgent act of evil he needed to perform immediately a few blocks away to save his dignity.

There now. That ought to be enough.

A tailor’s mannequin and a length of fabric, rely on the shadows as much as he can; demons are known for their Lurking in shadows, right? He takes a deep breath and lets his demonic essence _unfurl _outwards as wide a net of Evil as he can muster.

Davidson, the tailor, is more polite to Gabriel than Crowley could ever hope to be. He’s glad he discarded his initial plan of pretending to be a tailor, given the very real risk that he’d have ended up stitching Gabriel into his suit forever, arms sewed to his sides and possibly his mouth tacked shut too. Bloody wanker.

“It is, my Lord. If you wish to disrobe behind the curtain, I shall have it all made ready…”

There’s a rustling from the window and Crowley takes a deep breath and gets hold of himself. This is now or never and everything Crowley holds most dear about this wretched, wonderful world is riding on this gamble. Crowley’s never been tempted by dice games himself, but in this moment he thinks he gains a new understanding for the experiences of so many who are.

“Are you certain that we are unobserved, oh monstrous creature from the bowels of Hell?”

His normal tone, doubtless completely unrecognisable to Gabriel just yet, but best not to exaggerate anything here just in case. He can’t afford for anything about this to ring false to a suspicious listener, no matter how lacking in guile angels tend to be…

“No one is listening, oh demon Crowley.”

This time a tone as monstrous as Crowley can manage; a voice that crept up behind one’s ears and rasped in all the worst ways. A voice which all by itself stood on street corners in an ominous fashion and flipped a significant looking silver coin over and over again.

“Curses. If only I could understand why my evil plans are always so brilliantly thwarted. It’s as if the forces of Heaven have a champion here on Earth who thwarts me … thwartingly…”

Crowley winces but he keeps going. He’s the Serpent of Eden; it’s not the words themselves, he knows, it’s the message that’s important. Angels are not above revelling in the misfortunes of others; that’s how they all got into this mess after all. Gabriel doesn’t need to know _how_ Aziraphale does his thwarting, he needs an opportunity to enjoy watching a frustrated demon squirm.

“Such boundless energies this angelic champion expends in their cause, I swear to you! I take no rest, cease never in my wiles and schemes and yet! Yet, always there is this angel – this _Aziraphale_ – there to prevent my best effort s from succeeding and denting my progress for the cause of Hell’s glory! Oh, but that this angel should stop, how much more might I achieve!”

He chances a look up towards the window from the corner of his eye. Sure enough, Gabriel teeters over the window-frame, presumably trying to be inconspicuous and failing utterly. Crowley suppresses the snort he wants to give. Maybe it is an angel thing in general to have no subtlety or guile? He had always assumed that to be a quirk of Aziraphale’s, with the angel’s over-enthusiastic ways and boundless interests.

The things you learn about your lover after so many years together…

“Why Mister Crowley, you must not be downcast. I hear news that will bring joy to you and all the powers of Hell. They do say as how the angel Aziraphale, your nemesis, is being sent back to Heaven. There is word that the archangel, Gabriel, has succumbed to the Lusts of Men by setting his sights upon the angel Aziraphale’s person. He wishes, I hear, to focus all that energy towards _himself!_”

It sounds more gleeful than Crowley could ever imagine saying such awful words if he had ever been cursed with a nightmare like this. He reminds himself that he is a demon, and a damned good one at that. He revels in the evil he causes and Aziraphale is the enemy who stands in his way.

It must have worked because Crowley can hear Gabriel’s gasp of surprise. Crowley is a fantastic actor, it seems. Another glance upwards shows that Gabriel’s face is entirely taken in by this little performance.

“Can this be true? I was going to swallow Holy Water in my despair at once more being beaten by the angel Aziraphale. But such excellent news! Who might have thought that even the mighty archangel Gabriel was no better than the skirt-chasing lads of taverns and fairs, panting after those who are better employed? Ah, but who else among Heaven would risk their lives the way Aziraphale does, expending so much energy in his efforts against me that they say as he has long since had none left to engage in the frolics of those of Heaven! And who might they replace him with in his experience and skill? Why, only Aziraphale knows my ways well enough to …”

Crowley stumbles a little, aware that he might have been a little too caught up in his performance. Time to draw things to a close quickly before Gabriel smells a snake.

“Thwart them?”

Crowley reaches out to clap the dummy on the shoulder a little, as if he would ever willingly touch another demon. Still Gabriel doesn’t know that, does he?

“Exactly. Now let us repair to an evil drinking den, and drink to the success of evil on the Earth, thanks to Heaven’s foolishness.”

Crowley has a moment to spot with terror the weakness of what he has just said; there is no way he can move the mannequin out of the alley and away and keep the trick going.

Thankfully undemonic miracles can still come to his rescue for there is a frantic scrambling sound form Gabriel’s window and the archangel disappears from view before Crowley has the chance to even finish taking his first step. Crowley hurriedly shoves the dummy back into the workroom and slides more completely into the shadows.

Gabriel certainly seemed to believe everything he heard; Crowley is sure of it. So…

Well, now all Crowley can do is wait; wait and hope that for once things will go the way he wants them to when it’s most important. That his angel will be safe and happy and _here_.

*

Aziraphale’s not at all sure about what happened to change Gabriel’s mind, but he’s very glad – almost _unspeakably_ so - that he has.

“So, I’m … not going anywhere?”

Gabriel smiles the same as ever – too wide and teeth far too shiny to be natural – but his eyes… his eyes look somewhere between fearful and ashamed. Aziraphale cannot imagine what has happened since he last set eyes on the archangel, but it seems to have shaken Gabriel right down to his Grace.

The bit about redirecting one’s energies in productive ways was a little weird too, even for Gabriel’s standards.

“Change of plans. We need you here. In your bookshop. Battling evil.”

“Well, yes, I mean of course I try my hardest to –“

Sandalphon mercifully interrupts Aziraphale’s inane babbling. “Carry on battling.”

“Keep the medal.”

“But I don’t understand…” And Aziraphale _doesn’t_ understand, happy though he might be to have been granted such a reprieve.

Gabriel’s face morphs for a moment into a look of reproach that makes Aziraphale more nervous and twitchy than ashamed.

“I quite understand how hard you’ve been working all these years, now. Not that I doubted you and your … efforts before, of course! But you’ve really been putting those hours in and getting the best results that could possibly be managed. Good job, Aziraphale!” Gabriel claps him on the shoulder, hard, and then peers into his face with a more serious look of reproach. “You know, you might have mentioned it though, in all those reports of yours. We could all have stood to benefit from your insights. I could have organised a workshop or two.”

Aziraphale is very aware that he looks horrified at the very thought of a _workshop_, and in a moment of utter dismay he realises that Sandalphon clearly agrees with him. Aziraphale’s simply not in any fit state right now to contemplate _agreeing_ with bloody _Sandalphon_ about _anything_.

Gabriel’s still waiting for an answer, and Aziraphale is horribly conscious of the way Gabriel still hasn’t taken his hand off his shoulder, not to mention the casual strength in that hand and the way Aziraphale’s bones are objecting.

Gabriel either doesn’t notice Aziraphale’s pain, or he doesn’t care. Neither option is acceptable, and Aziraphale has a moment of extreme pity for whoever was assigned to Gabriel for their season in his place. Not that Aziraphale regrets his choice, of course. He’d never have wanted to give himself over to Gabriel, not when he was vulnerable and needed someone to take care of him. Does Gabriel even know how?

“I… I wasn’t sure if my – ah – methods would work for anyone else. Different circumstances and all. Or indeed if it was just a fluke working for me at all. I wouldn’t have wanted to get anyone’s hopes up?”

For an angel with not one single clue as to what is going on and what they are talking about, Aziraphale thinks he’s done rather well. Certainly, his response seems to make a lot more sense to the archangels than it does to him, which is what counts.

Aziraphale knows better than to ask questions.

Another moment, another ‘friendly’ punch to his shoulder and flash of pain, and it’s finally over. He’s alone in the bookshop.

Aziraphale closes the bookshop up with a thought and collapses into the nearest armchair in an ungainly heap of relief and unprocessed panic.

It had all been far too close, and far too worrying and far too awful, a most dreadfully stressful day all around. But it is over now at least, and it has somehow all worked out for the best.

Aziraphale scrubs his face with shaking hands and tells himself sternly to pull himself together. Crowley -for who else could it have been but Crowley? – has come to his rescue again, heroic demon that he is. Aziraphale has no idea how he could ever repay Crowley for his care and dedication, but the demon will be coming to visit him soon enough and Aziraphale is sure that some small act of something will occur to him then.

Perhaps he could pop out and pick up a box of those interesting little chocolates they were selling a few streets away? They are quite a novelty at the moment and _ever_ so extravagant, Aziraphale would never treat himself to such a thing at all. But _Crowley_…

Crowley would love them, Aziraphale was sure! All that dark chocolate and interesting new fillings? Yes, for his darling serpent, so fond of tasting and so uninterested in a full meal, Crowley would _adore_ chocolates, surely?

Hadn’t he mentioned them earlier, while Aziraphale was distracted by trying to avoid being dragged back to Heaven? Aziraphale couldn’t really remember, as fogged by remembered panic as his memories were from that moment. Still they were simply the _perfect_ token of affection for a demon and that was what counted!

Emboldened by the notion, Aziraphale finds the energy to rise from his chair and reach for his coat. If he hurries now he ought to be able to catch that nice new establishment he’s heard so much about before it closes.

He wonders where exactly he’d heard of them from…. Did Crowley mention them, perhaps? If so even better! They would be just the thing!


	10. St James’s Park – 1862

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Aziraphale accidentally creates a speed-demon out of Crowley, draws very entertaining cartoons, and refuses to help steal an elephant.  
  
...  
  
Also Crowley breaks all of our hearts, but it's fine.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You all knew this was coming.
> 
> You were not prepared. None of you were prepared. There was no preparing yourself for this. 
> 
> I am deeply sorry.

Whenever Aziraphale looks back on the first half of the nineteenth century, he remembers it as a series of golden moments, suspended in time…

Greeting Crowley with celebratory chocolates, only for the demon to laugh so hard he cried as he produced a matching set. After so long together, it would appear that they think far too alike! Still, two boxes of chocolates are certainly better than one, and they dig into them with wine and chatter and Crowley does a truly awful impersonation of the whole escapade with Gabriel and a tailor’s dummy. Aziraphale is terribly, painfully proud of Crowley and his quick thinking and his resourcefulness and creativity. He’s so grateful that his throat closes up on his tears and all he can do is curl up in Crowley’s arms in the oversized armchair until morning breaks.

*

Taking Crowley out in bubbly excitement to try out the new line to Birmingham in ’38.

“It’s the first of its kind, my darling!” He’d explained while all but dragging the demon along the platform at Euston, the crowd parting for them like a far-distant sea.

“I had no idea you were such a fan of innovation, angel. I shall remember this when I have a new craze I want to start.”

Crowley had been all in favour of an alternative form of transport that did not involve horses, but the idea of being crammed in with so many other people held less appeal for him. Aziraphale, by contrast, had been uncharacteristically giddy at trying something so new and exciting, and the demon had been a little swept up in his enthusiasm.

The outing had been a huge success, although it had also ended in Aziraphale clinging onto Crowley’s coattails when the speed demon he loved had wound up hanging quite halfway out of the window to catch the full force of the world whipping past them.

“_Crowley_! Really, Crowley this is _not_ the way you experience locomotives! However shall I explain how I discorporated my adversary with a steam engine and a bit of wind? Come back _inside this instant_!”

“Relax, angel! In fact,” Crowley did duck back inside, but only to try to pull Aziraphale close enough that they might both lean out of the window, “here, feel that wind! Isn’t it just like _flying_?”

“It most certainly is _not!_ Flying is much safer! Crowley, I don’t care how close you tug me, I am _not_ leaning out of that window, I tell you!”

Crowley’s hat was a lost cause; quite literally so as the poor thing must be half way to Manchester by now!

At the end of the day, they had both stumbled away from the train station, legs still a little wobbly from the excitement, and breathless with laughter and giddiness.

“Oh, angel,” Crowley was saying, one arm swung over Aziraphale’s shoulder, leaning in close to nuzzle his ear while he whispered into it. “Thank you for the day out. These trains-things are definitely onto something here. I can’t wait to see how fast they’ll get ‘em in the end…”

“Quite remarkable creatures, humans,” Aziraphale agreed, happily. “So many wonderful ideas, when they get around to them.”

*

Crowley coming tripping into the Bookshop, eyes dancing as he held a handful of pieces of card in his fingers. Each one held on one side Crowley’s address, a little black stamp, and a short little message. Nothing important, just whatever Aziraphale had been thinking about at the time. One of them, he vaguely remembered, was a notice of his deep irritation with the new colours of men’s ties and how difficult it was proving to find a cravat to suit him. The real prize was the other side; a drawing – a caricature if Aziraphale were to be entirely honest – of some Heavenly Head of Department, or Beelzebub (Aziraphale had only seen them once, from afar, but some features were _quite_ distinct enough to be replicated, or even a mutual human acquaintance.

“Honestly, angel,” Crowley was still sniggering as he dropped dramatically into his favourite of the armchairs, “You don’t think this was a little bit much?”

Aziraphale tried for an innocent expression, all wide eyes and enquiring little smile, but Crowley had known him for far too long for such tactics to work, and Aziraphale surrendered with a giggle.

“Oh, my dear, I simply couldn’t resist! Especially with that lovely standardised postage pricing coming in; I’m really only encouraging the adoption of order and cohesion in a service which does ever so much good for people, you know?”

Crowley tipped his head back and laughed, and laughed.

“So you sent me your little doodles, did you?”

Aziraphale might – _might_ – have pouted at him before moving to lean against the side-table next to Crowley’s hanging arm. “You don’t like them, then?”

Crowley’s smile faded into something more fond than amused.

“I love them, angel. I shall keep them forever.” His smile turned a little wicked, “I especially love the one of Gabriel being chased by a goose. You should do more like that if you want to send me your daily musings.”

Aziraphale hummed as he snuggled into the armchair with Crowley properly, leafing through the drawings again to relive the amusement of drawing them; a tiny, harmless act of out-spoken-ness which felt very daring indeed to him.

“It certainly seems more worthwhile to send them to you than to myself, dear. I can’t think what young Teddy Hook was thinking, I really can’t. What’s the fun in sending picture-cards to yourself, do you suppose?”

“Weird,” Crowley agreed. He tipped his head back, looking speculative. “Hmm… I wonder if I can get these to catch on?”

“Oh! That would be lovely, wouldn’t it?” Aziraphale perked up from his cosy state. “Sending people something pretty in the post as well as a few loving words.”

“I’m not sure your complicated feelings about clotted cream on scones counts as ‘loving words’, Angel, but I take your point.” Crowley muttered.

Aziraphale didn’t take offense; the snark was clearly automatic, as Crowley was thoroughly engrossed by his new idea.

“Something pretty…” he mused, “or… I wonder if I can encourage a smutty version?”

“Crowley!”

“What? I’m just helping make your idea popular!” Crowley defended, though his twinkling eyes rather undercut the point. “Got to have a wide appeal, new ideas. Everyone loves a little bit of –“

Aziraphale pushed him out of the chair with a huff. Crowley landed in an ungainly heap onto the carpet, but he was still laughing the whole time, the bastard.

*

“I’m just saying,” Crowley muttered, looking at the great glass houses with mild disappointment, “when you said ‘Great Exhibition’ I was picturing something a little … different.”

Aziraphale has clearly known his demon for far too many centuries, because he understood immediately. “I am an _angel_, Crowley, lest you have somehow forgotten. What about that role led you to believe I would have brought you to a – _a strippers’ convention_?”

Aziraphale has also obviously spending too much time under a demon’s influence, because he _may_ have said that last part a little too loudly on purpose. The young man who’d been standing a _little_ too close to them in hopes of garnering Crowley’s attention choked on his next breath and broke out into a very unattractive coughing fit.

Crowley turned back to look at Aziraphale with that look of breathless excitement with which he always greeted moments of wickedness from Aziraphale.

“_Angel!”_

Aziraphale shrugged. “You did ask, my dear. Besides, it’s so lovely to see so many wonderfully talented people coming together, isn’t it?”

Crowley shrugged, though Aziraphale could see the eager interest in his companion’s eyes as he mapped out all the things he especially wanted to go and find out everything regarding their inner-workings.

“I suppose it’s still a measuring contest either way. Just more complicated. Mind if I claim anything especially Prideful for Downstairs?”

Aziraphale thought about it for a moment.

“Only if there’s tickets to the opera looming in my near-future.”

Crowley grinned. “Deal. Come on, let’s go and see the prize contestants.”

“Don’t steal the elephant, you serpent. I _saw_ you eyeing it up and I will not be held responsible for my-“

“Oh come on! You know you want to see it!”

“No, I do _not!”_

*

Aziraphale also spends much of the nineteenth century on pins and needles, making the last small changes to build the most perfect Nest he possibly can for Crowley. It’s been finished for a few years now; anything else is just tinkering for the sake of it, trying to keep the Nest as fresh and vibrant as he can. Nests that aren’t fussed over can get that awful abandoned feeling about them even if the occupants are still there.

The presenting of a Nest, like all aspects of Nesting is as varied and personal as the bonds that fill them; there aren’t really any rules. Aziraphale could probably have presented it to Crowley as soon as it was essentially finished, but something had held him back. Some strange instinct that had surged up whenever he thought to finally take Crowley’s hand in his and speak the words to make this true and real.

_Wait until the next season_… Some deep instinct seems to say… _Just wait until then. Timing is important…_

It’s strange, but Aziraphale has listened to his instincts for so long when it came to Crowley (since the beginning if he were honest) that he doesn’t question it too much. It won’t be long now anyway, what’s a few more years?

Everything’s going to be just fine…

It feels like no time at all passes before everything goes horribly, utterly Wrong. On some level, Aziraphale is surprised: he’d always expected that it would be _him_ who ruined everything. That’s just how Aziraphale’s life seems to work out sometimes…

But no. It’s Crowley who …

Crowley who so calmly issues a request too horrible, too _vile_ for Aziraphale to even _contemplate_ acquiescing.

“I’m not an _idiot_, Crowley. Do you know what trouble I’d get into if they knew I’d been … fraternising? It’s completely out of the question.”

And it’s so like Crowley, isn’t it? To find one of the last remaining lines that Aziraphale hasn’t leapt over or been nudged past and demand to be allowed to breeze right over it himself. As if their relationship doesn’t have enough peril inherent within it? As if Aziraphale hasn’t placed as much trust in him as he has in himself – _more_ even, he thinks bitterly. But no, now Crowley wants Aziraphale to risk more, to risk _Crowley himself_, like he’s just something Aziraphale should resign himself to the potential loss of like it wouldn’t kill him.

_“Fraternising.” _Crowley all but spits the words, like it tastes bad. Like he can’t stand to have it near him.

Aziraphale is too outraged to care right now, though somewhere in the back of his mind he knows he’ll take that moment out again and worry about it until he bleeds. Instead he scoffs and disregards the question to have the last say and end this whole horrible conversation for good.

“Whatever you wish to call it. I do not think that there is any point in discussing it further.”

And then Crowley, ever the demon, ever the _serpent_, ever ready with his fangs bared to sink into an unwary victim, strikes a blow that Aziraphale isn’t sure he’ll ever recover from.

“I have lots of other people to fraternise with, angel.”

Aziraphale should keep walking, he should flee while he still can. But he doesn’t, he _can’t_, he has to stand his ground and fight back, it’s just how he is, damn him to – damn him to – to _this_.

“Of _course_ you do.”

“I don’t need you.” The fangs twist, venom seeping out and burning through Aziraphale’s veins like the Hell fire Aziraphale would have by far preferred to be slain by rather than for Crowley to do _this_ to him.

“The feeling is mutual. Obviously.”

“_Obviously_.”

Aziraphale is furious as he walks away- it’s not fleeing, it _isn’t_, just because he needs to run before he cries in front of Crowley, for all the world to see, it isn’t _running away_. How could Crowley say such things? How _could_ Crowley ask him for more? For _that_?

He storms into the bookshop, locks the door to keep away any inconvenient customers, and throws himself into his armchair. Then, and only then, surrounded by his Nest, does he allow himself to feel the full force of his hurt. His eyes well up and he sinks down, completely missing the armchair he meant to fall into and instead ending up curled into a ball on his favourite rug in the middle of the floor. It would have been a fitting sight, he’d have said if he’d been aware of the picture he makes; all alone and out of place and lost, nowhere else to fall to, really.

He would probably look pathetic to an outsider, is all he actually thinks to himself. They’d be right, of course, if they thought so.

Their argument keeps playing out, again and again, behind his eyes, and every time he feels more torn apart and wounded than the last. Everything had been going so well, Aziraphale had thought…

Well, Aziraphale has always had more optimism than was good for him, hadn’t he? An angel who has lived upon Earth for nearly 6000 years should know better by now than to expect anything other than disappointment.

But this was a blow Aziraphale hadn’t expected, at least not since _Hamlet_ and sonnets and rescues and unexpected little tokens of… of… of _affection_, Aziraphale had thought at the time, foolish angel that he is.

_“I want insurance in case something goes wrong.”_

Did this mean that Crowley wasn’t planning on keeping them safe? He didn’t intend to fight for them at all? At the first sign of trouble from his people, Crowley just wanted to take the quickest route out, so permanent that no one from Hell could possibly reach him? What of Aziraphale? How did Crowley expect him to cope without him? To be left all alone in the world, and to know that he had sown the seeds of his love’s utter destruction…

_Bad mate_ his instincts start whispering, _rejected and unworthy…_

Aziraphale curls himself up tighter, as if becoming smaller will mean that everything will hurt less.

And then another feature of the argument comes back to him, and Aziraphale doesn’t know which hurts worse.

_“I have plenty of other people to fraternise with.” _

Well then.

Aziraphale had known, he’d always known that Crowley had taken other people to his bed. He’s a demon after all, and he’d certainly complained often enough to Aziraphale about having quotas to fill every quarter century. It hadn’t hurt before, because none of those … assignments… had meant anything at all to Crowley, they were just a job.

Aziraphale just hadn’t considered that _he_ hadn’t meant anything either. That he was just another assignment, albeit one that Crowley had chosen for himself.

He’s _not_ an assignment though. He _isn’t_. He’s… He’s an angel, and the only one Crowley likes to spend his time with. Aziraphale sniffs.

Oh, but that’s Pride, isn’t it? To think himself Special like that. Aziraphale… Crowley must know so many interesting people, ones who don’t need rescuing, need blessings as favours, need… well. Of course, humans are different in that regard, but then again so are demons, aren’t they? No seasons, no… _obligations_.

And humans are a little like demons, Fallen as they both are. Perhaps Crowley finds the company of humans to be more palatable than that of angels, more generally speaking. Aziraphale might be Crowley’s favourite _angel_, but perhaps that doesn’t say more than the prospect of familiarity and the lack of an inevitable deadline, short-lived beings that humans are…

The thoughts in Aziraphale’s head swirl around and around and become less coherent and more despairing with every circuit. The night lasts forever, dark and cold as it is wont to be, and Azirphale has never wished for anything so much as he wishes he could find sleep the way Crowley can, and escape from everything just for a while.

*

Eventually the sun comes up.

Eventually Aziraphale’s tears dry up and there are no more to be cried.

Eventually the aches pass and ebb away until Aziraphale can breathe again.

The Principality Aziraphale uncurls and sits up, shakes himself firmly. All this grieving has gone on long enough, after all. And there really wasn’t any need for it in the first place, surely.

He’s just being silly.

This is just like that fight back in Wessex last millennium, when Crowley wanted another Arrangement between them. They’ll get over it.

Aziraphale will stop his unwelcome pursuit, put away his courting gifts and his silly little displays, and give Crowley all the space he might want. They weren’t so very far along the dance, thank goodness, he can still pull back. Aziraphale casts his mind back across the past century or so, but no, he needn’t have worried. He hasn’t made a complete fool of himself. They’ve spoken no promises like that, no words have been said that cannot be taken back. Clearly Crowley had become a little uncomfortable with what Aziraphale had been building up to, but nothing they can’t get past.

They aren’t irreparable after all.

Crowley will still come to help him through his coming season, of course he will, they’re friends and associates after all. Crowley’s never let him down before, after all, he always takes it so seriously. It’s the perfect excuse to spend a few days together, all alone, and be able to talk things through properly.

Aziraphale will suggest a compromise afterwards – in the quiet while they’re still curled up together – perhaps if Aziraphale kept the holy water at the bookshop? Or in some third, neutral location if Crowley was so convinced that he’d need it? Somewhere that Aziraphale could monitor in case Crowley ever felt that he needed so permanent and horrifying a way out?

They’ll get past this, as they always do. They’ve been together – not together-together of course, but still together – since the world began. It will all be fine.

Crowley knows where to find him these days, when it comes time. He’ll come. It will all be fine.

*

As the days pass and Crowley does not appear at the shop, Aziraphale becomes first more worried, but then far more confident that everything will all be alright when his next season comes around. This, at least, is familiar.

Several times in the past, whenever they’ve rowed too close to a season, Crowley had sulked until the very last minute before coming strolling in to whisk Aziraphale off somewhere comfortable and cosy. There’s so little time – or energy – for talking in the first few days, and by the time Aziraphale has clawed some of his wits back, it seems silly to return to whatever the cause of the strife had been.

It’s underhanded, of course, and it often means that Crowley gets his own way in the end far too often, but Aziraphale generally lets it go. By the time he’s past his season he can’t find the energy to dredge up old quarrels, and it isn’t as if Crowley doesn’t cave happily enough to Aziraphale’s batted eyelashes the rest of the time.

Not this time, of course, this time Aziraphale is quite _determined_ to settle things before they get up to anything together no matter what. No matter how long Crowley waits, how finely he cuts it, Aziraphale will remain firm.

He _will_.

So, no. Crowley’s on-going sulk doesn’t worry him in the slightest. The demon is ever so dramatic, of course he’ll wait until the eleventh hour to make his entrance.

There’s still no doubt that he’ll come.

*

Except that Crowley doesn’t come. Not this time.

*

Aziraphale pants, pain and fever stealing his breath, his co-ordination, his _mind_. He can’t go back to Heaven now, can’t even find the sense to put a portal together if he wanted to, and he _doesn’t_.

He can’t face Gabriel like this. _He can’t._

Aziraphale knows that his bid for independence and his rejection of Gabriel has made him plenty of enemies Up There, and not only with the archangel in question either. It doesn’t do to think of what they’d put him through in petty revenge for appearing to find a way around the curse that is so hated up there, excepting those who made the best of it. He’d be made an example of, that he does know, and he’s not at all sure he’d survive it in this state.

And besides, Aziraphale doesn’t _want_ Heaven’s mercy. He wants Crowley’s mercy, just wants _Crowley_ – if only Crowley would _come_.

But he doesn’t.

Aziraphale writhes around in his ruined sheets; seeking something he hasn’t the wherewithal to name. He’s long ago lost all control over his Grace, and it spirals out and around his Nest, searching for something – anything - to help.

_There._

Aziraphale is seized by some impulse buried so deep into his hindbrain he hadn’t known it was there. Scrambling up from his bed he lunges towards the armoire in the corner, jerking the doors open with shaking hands. There, tucked away at the back, is a little wooden box.

Even in his fever, Aziraphale has enough wits about him to be a little ashamed of it. He really shouldn’t have such a thing, especially not now after Crowley pulled back from their budding pair-bond as he had. But Aziraphale has always been a weak angel, of course he has. And he hadn’t been able to bring himself to throw them away entirely the way a good, sensible angel would have done with the after-effects of a casual season-partner.

Crowley’s feathers.

They’d been scattered all across the room during the principality’s last season, intermixed with his own white affairs, and much more interesting to look upon; not pure black but so many colours all together. Blues and greens and a little gold against the darker tones. Aziraphale had gathered them all up once his wits had returned, but he’d been so captivated by them and he couldn’t make himself throw them out. He’d carefully placed them in a polished wooden box that Crowley had brought back from some far-off temptation trip; an apology for missing dinner, he’d said at the time. Aziraphale had thought the demon was bringing him another token for his Nest, the way he always had even before Aziraphale had settled into a more permanent location.

Well.

Aziraphale had always _thought_ Crowley had been doing that.

After Aziraphale had realised that he had so horribly misjudged their relationship, he’d tried to discard the feathers, box and all now that Crowley’s essence had had the chance to infuse the wood the way it has. But he still couldn’t make himself do so, weak creature that he is. Foolish angel.

So he’d tucked it away and tried to forget it, and mostly failed.

And now Crowley’s essence calls out to Aziraphale’s fretful Grace, soothing the way nothing else the angel has tried seems capable of doing. He sits with his back to the armoire, holding the box and breathing deeply, letting whatever piece of Crowley he can have bring him whatever peace it can.

His own wings spring into view, looking as tattered as he feels which is only to be expected. But they curl around him like a cocoon, keeping Aziraphale safe and holding the little bubble of Crowley’s essence nice and close too.

Aziraphale breathes in deeply and some of the wild tension starts to slip away.

It’s all going to be fine. He’ll get through this.

This comfort might only be temporary, but so is the problem, after all.

Crowley never has to know that Aziraphale is once again taking a liberty that the demon hasn’t agreed to. Starting a mating ritual where it was not welcomed is a much greater offence, surely. Crowley is such a generous soul, after all. Even if he _did_ find out, he’d not begrudge Aziraphale a bit of comfort, even if it was a little scandalous.

Aziraphale and his scandalous box make it back to his bed, where he collapses back into the tangle of sheets and tries to find a smile before the fever hits him again.

Maybe one day, he thinks a little deliriously, maybe one day he’ll be able to tell Crowley about this, and they’ll laugh together about Aziraphale breaking the norms of proper behaviour yet again – and this time Crowley didn’t even have to talk him into it! Yes, that’s a nice thought.

“One day is ever such a nice idea,” Aziraphale mutters to himself, to the room and his Nest as the season comes back for him once more. “One day…”

*

Eventually, after days that feel like weeks of pain-soaked nightmares in which Aziraphale’s body Grace and mind all take their turns and indeed team up to rebel against him, it passes.

Aziraphale crawls from his sheets, aching right down to his bones, to his Grace like he never has even in the final hours of the Great War. He drinks greedily straight from the tap, too exhausted to remember how glasses work and too shaky to trust himself with holding them if he had thought of it, then he collapses back into his armchair to recover.

He doesn’t think of Crowley, and he _won’t_. Crowley clearly isn’t thinking of him. Fine.

Aziraphale didn’t need him anyway. Or want him. Well, he doesn’t want him _anymore_, at any rate.

_(Aziraphale is such a liar, bad angel that he is.)_

But, _really._

If Crowley had wanted out of their Arrangement, he’d only needed to say. Sulking and leaving Aziraphale like this was … it was very ungentlemanly. Well if that’s how Crowley wants it, then fine. Aziraphale isn’t going to pursue him any further; he at least has enough manners not to court a pair-bond with the disinterested. Pushing yourself where you’re not wanted is the actions of a cad, after all, worthy only of people with –at best – a very poor understanding of boundaries and communication. Aziraphale will call himself a lot of things when he’s being _very_ honest with himself, but never that. He will not be a second Gabriel come to Earth. He will take the hint.

Crowley is free to spend his time with all those other people he fraternises with, and Aziraphale will try to find out what he is without a demon sort-of-mate.

It will all be fine.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OK, so those of you who made it thus far and can still see through the tears; have a few of the historical events mentioned here. (I did a *lot* of research on the early nineteenth century for this chapter)
> 
> 17 September 1838 - London-Birmingham line opens and the railway boom starts  
This line, which connected London to the Midlands for the first time, had been planned since 1833 (look, it's an actual rule that everything train-related arrives late, ok? Start as you mean to go on) with sections opened in 1837. The completion of the Kilsby Tunnel enabled the full 112-mile line, designed by the engineer Robert Stephenson, to be opened. London-Birmingham was the first railway line into the capital city, with passengers disembarking in the newly-designed Euston station. The success of then line helped encourage the great railway boom.
> 
> 10 January 1840 - A uniform postage rate of one penny is introduced  
Britain's postal system was expensive, complex and open to abuse. As a response to widespread discontent, a committee of enquiry was set up in 1835. In 1837, Rowland Hill proposed a uniform post rate of one penny, irrespective of distance. His proposals were implemented three years later. In the decade after the implementation of the 'penny post', the volume of letters sent in Britain increased five-fold to almost 350 million a year.
> 
> Also in 1840 - the first picture card was sent  
Although cards with messages had been sporadically created and posted by individuals since the beginning of postal services, the earliest known picture postcard was a hand-painted design on card, posted in Fulham in London by the writer Theodore Hook to himself in 1840 (look sometimes you don't get enough post and you have to start sending it to yourself, I suppose) which came bearing a penny black stamp. He probably created and posted the card to himself as a practical joke on the postal service, since the image is a caricature of workers in the post office. In 2002 the postcard sold for a record £31,750.
> 
> 1 May 1851- The Great Exhibition opens at the Crystal Palace in Hyde Park, London  
The most famous of the events mentioned in this chapter, this was the brainchild of Victoria's husband, Prince Albert, and was designed to provide a showcase for the world's most advanced inventions, manufactures and works of art. It was housed in the massive 19-acre Crystal Palace, designed by Joseph Paxton. The event attracted almost six million visitors during the five summer months it was open. Many ordinary people travelled to London for the first time on the new, faster and cheaper trains.

**Author's Note:**

> If you liked this, check out my blog for random thoughts on writing, fantasy, dragons and folklore. Also there's a tiny dragon as a guest-star, so that can't be bad!  
I can be found at: <https://herebeblog.wordpress.com/>


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